If you weren’t already aware, the SciFi channel is changing its name to “SyFy”, which is, in my opinion, an abominably stupid name. Why are they doing this? Here’s the official explanation:

“What we love about this is we hopefully get the best of both worlds,” Mr. [Dave Howe, the network's president] said. “We’ll get the heritage and the track record of success, and we’ll build off of that to build a broader, more open and accessible and relatable and human-friendly brand.”

Greg Dean, of Real Life Comics, addressed the name change here.

While Greg mentions Enterprise explicitly in his comic, this is something that the entire Star Trek franchise (and several other “geek” franchises, for that matter) fell prey to in recent years. There’s a desire to reach out to new fans, so the franchise gets changed in ways to appeal to the people who currently hate it. The end result is, usually, that most of the new fans who’re being courted still aren’t interested, and the old fans are alienated.

What does this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, he’s reached out to Iran and gotten his hand slapped. Russia doesn’t seem too keen on the “reset” (or is that “overcharged”) United States. He’s pretty much failing to win new friends.

In the meantime, he’s given British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of DVDs he can’t even watch, and now he’s effectively given French President Nicolas Sarkozy a slap in the face by reaching out to former French President Jacques Chirac.

Well, I suppose that if we alienate every other nation in the world, that’ll be a change (and all we’ll have left is hope). That’s one way of getting Hope and Change, I guess.