Because I know exactly nothing about parenting, I thought I could, at the very least, help my friends out by searching the internet for some awesome baby names. A quick Google search for “baby names” should demonstrate to you that this is one of the hottest things going on the internet. Everyone’s got a great new idea (or 20) for a name, and they want to share it by posting on any message board they can get their bored little hands on. And better yet, these folks have already done the research on the name’s origin, so that you don’t have to.

And even better, someone ELSE has scoured all of these helpful forums and aggregated the brightest and the best. I don’t know why it’s called “The Bad Baby Names Blog“, because this stuff is pure gold:

AMITY: In the movie Jaws, the town that was attacked by the shark was called Amity. It is a very pretty name.

Non-sequitur WHHHAAAAA???

LAMYA: This name makes me think of a llama. A furry creature with big hairy hips. Like a hippo.

Double-WHAAAAAAAA????

CHIRANJEEVI: This name reminds me of Corn. Yummy corn.

Maybe she is high? That would explain all of these comments. Plus the munchies.

CLOVER: This would be an awesome name for someone who was born on St. Patrick’s Day!

No. Just no. A leprechaun’s coming to kick your ass right now.

Future parents should, nay, must go read this blog’s entire archive. I hope she updates again soon. One more pearl, for the historians out there:

Does any one no what makaveli means and do u thnk it would be weird to name a boy this?

makaveli was a person (dont know where from) that faked his death to get to his enemies

I don’t think it ‘means’ anything, not that I can find, anyway. Makaveli was a gangster, or something of the sort, and also the pseudonym of Tupac.

I read somewhere that the name meant “the prince of power”. I think it’s a cute name.

Best answer?

where am I ??? the twilight zone ????

I know there are a whole bunch of you who like the Chinese restaurant across the street from my office almost as much as I do, but in order for us to continue going there for lunch at the same time without anyone (you) getting injured (by me), I’m going to need to establish some ground rules.

First, let’s get a general idea of the layout of the place. When you walk in the door, you see in front of you a small cafeteria line with a plexiglas guard. Posted prominently on this guard, right in front of your face when you walk in the door, is a menu. This is all the stuff that they cook in the restaurant. There is a lot of it, and it’s all very good. You can order anything off of the menu that you want, dine in or carry out, but you will have to wait five minutes while they cook it for you.

Posted right above this menu, on bright pink poster board in heavy black marker, is a sign proclaiming “Express lunch $5.95″. Further signs explain that this express lunch, which we can take to mean “fast”, “quick”, or even “instantaneous”, comprises rice or noodles and two (2) items of your choice from the cafeteria steam table visible directly behind the plexiglas.

Now, right here is where you people are starting to get confused. You see, the reason that the express lunch special is cheap and fast is that the options are limited to what you see in front of you on the steam table. If you don’t like any of that, you need to scurry on up to the cash register, order an item from the menu, and wait for it to be cooked. These are your two options. A third option is to leave this restaurant and don’t ever come back.

I can understand that the presentation and implementation of the available options might be confusing the first time you visit the restaurant, but two short exchanges of words between you and the server will get you to where you need to go.

You: I want to order from the menu.

Server: Go over there. (points to register)

If the express lunch offerings look appealing to you–and trust me, I’ve tried them all and they are delicious–walk right up to the server and tell her which things you want. There is a protocol here that takes one visit to learn:

1. State whether this order is “to go” or “for here”. This is critical. Without this piece of information, your server won’t know which receptacle to dish your meal into - a styrofoam container or a ceramic plate. I hope you can figure out which receptacle is for which purpose.
2. Select your starch. Steamed rice, fried rice, or noodles. Sometimes the noodles are rice vermicelli, sometimes they are lo mein. Whichever one is sitting there in front of you is the one you are going to get, so don’t ask for rice noodles when it’s lo mein day. Do you want noodles or not? This is the only thing you need concern yourself with at this stage.
3. Select your two entrees. A spring roll counts as an entree for the purposes of the express lunch. If you get two meats *and* a spring roll, you better expect to pay extra. This will not be explained to you beforehand. Live and learn.

Again, not so easy for newcomers. But you, lady with the schnauzer jacket, I’ve been in that line behind you on at least three different occasions, and you’re just not getting it, and it’s taking you a whole lot of complicated word exchanges to try to get it, and it still doesn’t work, and I just don’t know how to help you.

Schnauzer lady: I want the lunch special with sauteed spinach and broccoli beef.

Server: This is lunch special. (gesturing at steam table, which contains neither of the above)

Schnauzer lady: Ok, I’d like the lunch special, but with SAUTEED SPINACH and BROCCOLI BEEF.

Server: You order from the menu, go over there.

Schnauzer lady: No, no, no! I don’t want a full order of those things, I just want a little bit with some noodles and a spring roll for $5.25, but do you have those other noodles, the skinny rice ones? I like those better.

Server: *blink*

And you, lady with the unbleached linen tank dress and clogs - ok, the deal with the soup is that there are two kinds available to you on an “express” basis, hot & sour or egg drop. Pretty standard fare, no? But the good people here at this restaurant like to go the extra mile and garnish your plastic container of soup with some chopped green onions. That’s where you seem to have a problem.

Clogs: (addressing the whole restaurant) I can’t possibly eat this much food. I’ll just take soup to go.

Server: Hot & sour or egg drop?

Clogs: You don’t have Hong Kong style soup with tofu and noodles and veggies?

Server: You order that from the menu over there, ready in 5 minutes.

Clogs: *Sighhhh* I can’t wait that long, just give me the egg drop, I guess. NO NO! That container is too big, you can’t possibly expect me to eat that, it’s going to get cold before I’m even halfway done… OK, just fill it halfway.

Server: OK, halfway.

Clogs: What is that you’re putting on top? Is that spinach?

Server: It’s onion.

Clogs: Well, can you put spinach on there instead?

Server: *blink*

One more important guideline should be noted here. They stop cooking food for the express lunch steam table at 1:30 PM. This means that when the pan of kung pao tofu is down to the last three tasty brown triangles, that’s it! No heaping pan of freshly-cooked tofu is coming out, so if you want a fresh pile of tofu, you’d best order it from the menu or try to get here earlier.

But look at it another way. Arriving at 1:30 pm and ordering what’s left of the express lunch can actually work to your advantage. When you point to those last three triangles of tofu and the last 5 strips of black bean chicken as your two entrees, the lady will take pity on you and offer you a sizable helping of a third, and sometimes a fourth, entree selection! Yowza!

But the nice lady is not going to be inclined to heap this bounty upon you if, every time you haul your ass in there at 1:45, you stick out your lower lip and whine, “Is this ALL you have??”

But can the public be trusted to tag art? Will curators let them?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art ran a test in fall 2005 in which volunteers supplied keywords for 30 images of paintings, sculpture and other artwork. The tags were compared with the museum’s curatorial catalog, and more than 80 percent of the terms were not in the museum’s documentation. Joachim Friess’s ornate sculpture “Diana and the Stag,” for example, was tagged with the expected “antler,” “archery” and “huntress.” But it was also tagged “precious” and “luxury.”

“The results were staggering,” said Susan Chun, general manager for collections information planning at the Met. “There’s a huge semantic gap between museums and the public.”

True. Regardless of how you might feel about how much cultural education the average person receives in this country, there is a disconnect between what you see when you look at a painting and what the curator chooses to tell you about it on the small placard next to it or in the museum catalogue. A lot of assumptions are made about what the viewer knows or doesn’t know.

As the article goes on to point out, there are obvious descriptors of art works that the experts just aren’t able to see anymore, and on the flip side, there are a lot of things that are known about works of art that aren’t evident in the pieces themselves. I think our awareness of this fact creates a psychological disconnect that prevents open discussion of what a work of art is “about”.

I’m especially aware of these issues at the moment, having logged some serious museum time in the last couple of weeks in Rome, where the older museums don’t really tell you anything about what you’re looking at. The Vatican is the biggest example of this - the collections of the Vatican are immense and overwhelming, and you have to know exactly what you are looking for when you go in, because there is very little information there to help you out.

The Vatican’s collections could really benefit from a tagging effort like Steve to make their artworks more understandable and findable. However, since this particular project is funded by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services, it’s only dealing with American museums.
Tagging the Vatican’s collection would be a much more daunting task than doing the same with any American museum. I wonder how the results of an Italian tagging project would differ from an American one.

Get Your Monster Name

Prince is mysterious figure, a formidable talent, and never afraid to experiment with his music. He’s deeply religious–a Jehovah’s Witness–but instead of feeling limited by his faith, he channels his spirituality into creativity and an abiding love of life in all its sensual glory. His performance at the ball game was just fun. He didn’t come out raging, heaving, and overdoing it like the usual sequined diva or combo of aging rockers.

He was just…himself. He played and sang some of his Purple Rain material and worked in a couple of covers, joking about the rain and throwing in a cute musical smirk with his selection of “Proud Mary”. (It’s not a true medley unless you utter the words “left a good job in the citaaaay…” at high tempo) Ending with the song “Purple Rain”, asking the crowd to sing the soaring “woooo-ooo-oooo-ooo” while swaying in the pouring rain was just lovely. I know, the monsoon was just a lucky coincidence, but it was a lot of fun to watch.

Definitely one of the best halftime performances ever - a demonstration that it’s better to showcase a real artist and seasoned performer instead of mashing together a few big names into an ill-conceived variety show.

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

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I should confess that I’ve always been more of an observer than a participant in Texas Womanhood: the spirit was willing but I was declared ineligible on grounds of size early. You can’t be six feet tall and cute, both. I think I was first named captain of the basketball team when I was four and that’s what I’ve been ever since.

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I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point — race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.

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The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not with authority, but with ourselves.

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I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

–Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

Granted, my “life story” is not nearly as interesting as that of some of the other people in the class. One woman recounted the story of a journey from India to London in a 1964 Chevy, two months on the road traversing such remote locations as the Khyber Pass, all because her father refused to pay the duty for shipping the car. Another woman was a speed-skier like her father (who was also an air traffic controller and a stunt pilot) and now helps negotiate truces in war-torn locales around the world. Another found a world of magic and symbolism in Belize, where she survived a machete attack and went on to forge a close but complicated relationship with the family who came to her rescue.

I loved all of these stories. I think a common thread running through them was the notion of “other”-ness and how unexpected interactions with the unfamiliar change who we are. My story has that theme too, but not on such a grand scale. I’m writing about my experiences quitting school and living with hippies in the Finger Lakes region while working at a police department. Two worlds that were dramatically different on the surface, but fundamentally very similar.
My classmates’ stories generally had optimism at their core, and the exhilarating sense of freedom that comes from broadening one’s horizons. But there exists a darker side of the interaction with the foreign. In our search for life-changing experiences, we tend to forget that our interaction changes the lives of the “others” too, and not always for the better.

When you’re writing a memoir, it’s important to firmly establish the “I” and write her unique perception of the scenes and events. You can’t be omniscient. I think a big writing challenge will be writing from my own memory with the voice of someone who’s flawed and unreliable as a narrator, and somehow conveying the effect that “my” words and actions have on other people in the story, without making assumptions about what they are thinking.

This life story writing is really hard. But also kind of easy. I’m not a compelling nonfiction writer. I’m definitely not a good speaker or verbal storyteller. It’s so hard to get the right words to come out! But in yesterday’s class, Thom gave us ten minutes to write a short scene from our story, and as soon as my pen hit the paper, it just came flying out. Pretty rough, needs some editorial trimming and sharper detail, but a half-decent start - and it was just there, waiting for its cue to come into being.

I haven’t written creatively (and yes, memoir is a form of creative writing) in many years. Blog writing doesn’t count, because it’s like journalism, which is boring and predictable (when I do it) no matter what the subject matter. I’m looking forward to exercising these muscles some more.

While I’m definitely in favor of classical music and think public radio might be the best place for it, giving up the news programs will mean a critical loss for the DC radio-listening public. It’s pretty sad when the seat of our government and the home of intelligent, diverse people and cultural resources can’t keep alive more than one public news radio station. I guess I’ll be getting my NPR stuff from WAMU now. It’s a decent station but it caters more to the academic crowd, doesn’t do as much local interest programming, and doesn’t carry some of the shows I’ve grown to really like.

The only other radio station I listen to sometimes is WTOP, which is a local independent outlet. Unfortunately, other than providing decent traffic and weather coverage, WTOP is a steaming pile of crap, with stories and features that cater pretty much exclusively to white people living in the Virginia exurbs.

I threw away my candy bar
And I ate the wrapper
And when they told me what I did
I burst into laughter

-Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks

I’m trying out a crazy new experiment - eating vegetarian. (No, not eating vegetarians) No particular thought process or game plan, just seeing how little meat I can eat. So far it’s going pretty well - it’s been a little over a week and I’ve eaten mostly vegetable and dairy matter, except for two very tasty pork dumplings and a delicious chunk of a poor doomed mahi-mahi.

I’ve learned that eating veggie is both easy and difficult. Easy if you’re just cooking for yourself, difficult if you’re going out to eat at a restaurant.

I’ve also noticed that we seem to be terrified of beans here in America. Aside from the refried ones that pad our burritos and the french green ones that are basically all pod and no seed, restaurants are not terribly conversant with the legumes. I guess they get a bad rap for being a simple peasant food, and for supposedly causing flatulence. But hey, I don’t know about your intestines (and please don’t tell me), but peas and beans irritate me far less than do meat and dairy.
Beans are a great thing to eat. They’ve got protein *and* fiber, and they cook up so nice and tasty in just about any sauce you can think of. And they’re like 49 cents a pound. So, guess what I’m bringing to your party?

This NYT feature on the emerging discipline of Positive Psychology is pretty interesting. The idea is that lots more study needs to be done on how positive thinking affects physical health as well as mental health. After thinking about this for a while, I don’t believe this should be its own intellectual discipline, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to teach such things in med school. If you’ve ever had surgery or some other serious medical concern (or know someone who has), you know very well the effect that a doctor’s attitude can have on your own attitude, and therefore your stress level, and therefore your general well-being. Injecting a little positive thinking into medical procedures couldn’t hurt.

This topic caught my eye because of my recent prolonged exposure to some very negative-thinking friends of mine. If anyone needs a positive-thinking intervention, it’s these folks. After only 16 waking hours of listening to this couple’s bemoaning and criticism of friends, relatives, neighbors, complete strangers, shopkeepers, various objectionable ethnic groups, the town, the state, the country, the world… I wanted to kill myself. My mood was in the toilet. I was seriously starting to believe that life was just not worth living, and that there was nothing out there to stem the tide of ill will raging unchecked through our universe. After a quick trip to a coffee shop and some venting, I was able to stop the dark whooshing noises in my head.

But the experience got me thinking. Mr. and Mrs. Complainalot have nice lives, live in a cute town, have a nice house, a decent income, family members close by, friends, hobbies, and various things that make life engaging and interesting. They keep busy but not too busy. To the outside observer, life’s not exactly perfect, but it’s pretty good. But they have health problems, and seem older and more tired than other people in their same demographic. It’s hard to believe that their attitude toward life has nothing to do with this. After all, why try to stay healthy and active when everything’s all just going to hell, nobody cares about you, and you’re just going to die eventually anyway?

In a situation like this, positive psychology could potentially save lives. I like the idea of an intervention. It would be really refreshing to shake my finger at these folks and yell YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BED UNTIL YOU TELL ME ONE NICE THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY! NOW SPILL IT!

Another interesting aspect of positive psychology is that instead of being essentially narcissistic, like all those positive-thinking self-help books out there, there is evidence that you can attain more personal contentment by doing something nice for someone else than you can by doing something nice for yourself. I can buy this. In fact, I think the thing that’s lacking in the Complainalots’ worldview is the frequent exercise of altruism, whether in thought or in action. Taken to extremes, the lack of altruism is a personality disorder. But I suspect that in today’s American culture, altruism simply is not valued as a laudable trait, and a lot of us fall into a pattern of thinking that pits us against the horde of miscreants who are constantly trying to take our stuff or elbow ahead of us in the cosmic line.

So, the study of positive psychology has some potential application in medicine and social policy, and let’s not forget religion. As a matter of fact, as the Times article points out, the proposed area of study has some uncomfortable religious trappings. Spread goodwill in the world? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Be kind to people whether you think they deserve your kindness or not? Sounds a bit like Christianity to me. Admittedly, these are the good parts of Christianity, so hey, let’s not strike it down as unworthy of our philosophical consideration.

However, like any religion, positive psychology’s relative benefit is in its practical application. My support of the idea comes to a screeching halt when the article starts to talk about schools incorporating positive psychology’s lessons into literature classes. To wit:

This endeavor outstrips the ongoing Strath Haven experiment. The effort there, financed by a $2.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is limited to the ninth-grade language-arts program. At the school last year, the positive psychologists interwove their teachings with the literature classes. The idea was to buffer the lessons from bleak books like “Lord of the Flies” and “Romeo and Juliet” with some reassuring thoughts — or at least a more positive framework for understanding human behavior than the classics offer. Thus, according to Mark Linkins, now coordinator of the Swarthmore school district’s curriculum, who helped teach the classes, the animalistic and murderous Jack in “Lord of the Flies” shows “what happens when someone is lacking in signature strengths.” And when reading “The Odyssey,” students were asked: “What are the signature strengths that Odysseus lived and breathed? What are the things he might have improved on to make things go better?”

Now, this is taking things too far. It is not OK to fuck with literature by infusing it with contemporary psychology. What are the things that Odysseus could have improved on? Gimme a break. This is basically saying to your teenage students: “Dear students, you have been placed in the special ed class because of your violent tendencies and your inability to understand the complexities of classical thought. Your dignity will be returned to you at the close of school hours.” The very idea of putting Odysseus on the guidance counselor’s couch is just… unfathomable. For those of you who were educated in a dignity-free school system, let’s sum up: Characters in ancient Greek literature were considered to be playthings of capricious gods, and their fates were determined by outside forces, such as whom their grandaddy ate for dinner. Odysseus was never, ahem, in any position to make healthy life decisions.

And, as I can tell you from my experiences in art school, healthy life decisions and positive thinking have no place in art. Rather than attempting to teach teenagers to drop the sulkiness and act more helpful and chipper, we should be teaching them to understand literature and art on a deep level, so that their minds can stay active and engaged. Studying art and literature requires the development of a healthy understanding that sometimes life just has no meaning, and horrible things happen - but that even in tragedy and meaninglessness, there can be beauty. Now there is a positive thought.