(Roughly) Daily

Readers may recall an earlier (pre-blog) alert to a service that tracks the prevalence of different boys’ and girls’ names over time.  Finally, the geo-mash-up is here.

The folks at Baby Name Map have laid that data on top of Google Maps– and have created a way to compare and contrast the popularity of names from one region to another…

As we noodle on nomenclature, we might might wish a challenging Happy Birthday to Eugene Ionesco, the French-Romanian dramatist who was born on this date in 1909.  Though he didn’t pen his first play until he was 39–La Cantatrice Chauve, first performed in 1950 with the English title The Bald Soprano— Ionesco completed 27 plays (along with numerous novels and essays), and became a defining practitioner of “The Theater of the Absurd.”

Irving Penn’s Portrait of Eugene Ionesco

… or, how Bush got away with it:

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a not-for-profit membership organization serving college students and faculties around the U.S., recently conducted a study, the third in an annual series, testing the civics knowledge of Americans.  The sample included both respondents with college educations and without, and had a significant sample of elected officials.  And while ISI leans noticeably to the Right in its programmatic work, the study results should cause concern on both sides of the aisle…  A few of the results:

-Only half of U.S. adults can name all three branches of government

– 54% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress; almost 40% incorrectly said that it belongs to the president.

– 56% can name Paula Abdul as a judge on American Idol, but only 21% know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

– Just 54% can correctly identify a basic description of the free enterprise system.

A college education doesn’t seem to help:  only 24% of college graduates know the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.

As for elected officials: 43% do not know the Electoral College is a constitutionally mandated assembly that elects the president. One in five thinks it “trains those aspiring for higher office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”  And 30% of elected officials do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.

Overall, elected officials scored an average grade of just 44 percent; ordinary citizens did  better, though not much, scoring 49 percent.  No group got a passing mark.

It goes on…  One can see the study results in full, along with the questionnaire and a description of the methodology, here (section tabs, on the left).

As we remind ourselves that the only free electorate is an informed electorate, we might warm the birthday tapas for Félix Lope de Vega Carpio– Lope de Vega– the Spanish dramatist who was born on this date in 1562.  He is reckoned to have written between 1,500 and 2,500 fully fledged plays, of which 425 have survived.  One estimate puts his work at twenty million dramatic verses, earning him a position in the firmament of Spanish letters second only to that of Cervantes.

Lope de Vega

Just in time for Thanksgiving, a fresh take on an old favorite, Turducken— a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey (all stuffed with cornbread dressing, of course).

What could improve on this Olympian delight?  Well, what improves a hamburger, or an omelette, or… well, just about anything?  Bacon!

From our friends at Bacon Today, illustrated instructions for the preparation of the Turbaconducken (Turducken Wrapped in Bacon)…  it may look like a part of an alien autopsy, but it’s reputedly really yummy… and in any case, one’s bound to be the only gourmand on the block serving such succulence.

As we loosen our belts, we might wish a thoughtful Happy Birthday to Baruch (or Benedict) de Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher whose rationalism and determinism put him in opposition to Descartes and helped lay the foundation for The Enlightenment, and whose pantheistic views led to his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam; he was born on this date in 1632.

As men’s habits of mind differ, so that some more readily embrace one form of faith, some another, for what moves one to pray may move another to scoff, I conclude … that everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits; each would then obey God freely with his whole heart, while nothing would be publicly honored save justice and charity.

– Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670

Spinoza

Your correspondent suspects that readers know the feeling:  “I could write, except that…”

Well, the good folks at iSerenity have removed one more rationalization; they have created a series of soundscapes, each of which is designed to provide an audio environment conducive to work…   There’s something for everyone– a waterfall, a library, a highway; 34 thus far, with new loops added regularly– so however eccentric one’s taste in background noise, there’s sure to be one that’s a sound fit.

One more good excuse bites the dust.

As we sharpen our pencils, we might wish a regal birthday to Otto I, aka Otto the Great, (arguably) the first Holy Roman Emperor; he was born on this date in 912.  Otto was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany, King of Italy, and “the first of the Germans to be called the emperor of Italy” (according to Arnulf of Milan).  Charlemagne, the other candidate for “first,” had been crowned emperor in 800, but his empire had been divided amongst his grandsons; and following the assassination of Berengar of Friuli in 924, the imperial title lay vacant for nearly forty years.  In 962, Otto was crowned Emperor of what became the Holy Roman Empire.

Detail from The Magdeburger Reiter, c. 1240, traditionally intended as a portrait of Otto I

A dyslexic man walks into a bra…

As we wonder what became of Stephen Wright, we might wish a carefully-phrased Happy Birthday to writer Mary Ann Evans– better known by her pen name, George Eliot.  The author of seven novels (perhaps most notably, Middlemarch), a good bit of poetry, and a number of translations and essays, she was born on this date in 1819.

(In Daniel Deronda, she warned…

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

…but surely there’s no problem here?)

George Eliot