Author: Richard Chonak

More baby talk
Mark Maier and Victor Lams have been raving about a handy tool for finding baby names, but in my hardly-ever-humble opinion, the coolest baby-name tool is the Name-O-Meter. It shows the popularity rankings of 4,139 names as they have varied over the past 100 years.
But that’s not all: want the latest list of the top 1000 baby names in the US? Here ya go.
Data! I just love data!
As you read down that top-1000 list, you’ll notice more and more, ahem, variant spellings. For example, #998 is “Dontae”, but that’s presumably intended to be pronounced like “Dante”. It’s a pity we’re so libertarian here in America, ’cause I wish we could prevent parents legally from saddling their kids with names that look like typos.
In some countries a little paternalistic restriction is par for the course. A few weeks ago, German authorities forbade a Turkish couple from naming their baby “Osama Bin Laden”. Good thing too. Unfortunately, the Kiwis haven’t reached that level of progress yet, so their child-welfare advocate can only protest in vain when a child is named after a criminal gang.
A writer down in Tennessee occasionally sends me examples of odd names. Once, she wrote, she met a girl named Dinette. “What’s her brother called: Armoire?”
Postscript: A judge in Florida says there actually are some limits on what you can call yourself. Maybe the man involved ran afoul of the “Truth in Advertising” rules when he tried to change his name to “God”.

The Tax Man is not earth-friendly
This deserves a prize for stupidity in government: the UK places a high tax on diesel fuel, but drivers who switch to cheaper recycled vegetable oil in place of it are being punished. Apparently reducing your use of fossil fuels makes you a tax-cheat!
How much would you bet that the tax was originally justified on the ground that it would encourage conservation?

A new gadget promises to interpret babies’ cries
Now that’ll be a handy invention. Hey, I’d be lucky if I could figure out my cat’s noises.

Planned Parenthood’s contribution to Respect Life Week: some good news
The PP-funded research organization, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, has announced that abortion rates are down in the U.S. The report contains some bad and some good news for pro-life advocates; here’s the good part:

The study also showed a steep drop — nearly 40 percent — in the abortion rate for women 15 to 17 years old. It fell from 24 per 1,000 young women in 1994 to just 15 in 2000.

An encouraging fact indeed. As you might expect, the speculation about its cause is a mixed bag:

Those figures do not necessarily mean more teens are carrying pregnancies to term. Other key indicators of teenage sexual activity — including teen pregnancy and births to teen mothers — also fell steadily in the late 1990s.
Analysts have credited a broad set of factors for those trends, including fears of HIV and AIDS and a booming economy that may have led young people to put off raising families in favor of high-paying jobs.

Two religious art exhibits
Washington, DC area readers can choose between two presentations of religious art this week: Christendom College in Front Royal, VA has its fourth annual Sacred Art Exhibit underway through next Sunday, October 13.
Also, the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center is presenting a sculpture exhibit, “Visions of One Another: Works by Christian and Jewish Sculptors” now and continuing through November 12.
Thanks to sculptor Scott Sullivan for the information. Scott is co-founder of the Catholic artists’ fellowship Artists for a Renewed Society.
(That last link is a shameless plug, as I’m ARS’ webmaster.)