humor

On Names

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Naming a thing gives it power.
Before my daughter was born, my wife and I spent a prodigious amount of time trying to decide on boys and girls names (at the time we didn’t know the sex of our yet to be born child) because we wanted to make sure that whatever we decided upon was right.
Moving backwards, before we got my dog, we also spent a lot of time deciding on the name because again, we wanted to make sure it was right.
Hell, when we got our car after our daughter was born, we batted around a number of names for it before we settled on “Murray.” One because Murray the Matrix has a nice sing-song ring to it and two because we used to live on Murray St. Due to the reasons I mentioned it, just seemed right.
All of that being said, I would like to point out that the Russian energy company Gazprom just made a 2.5 billion dollar investment in Nigera and the joint company is being called Nigaz. You don’t need be to a corporate branding guru to know that someone should have spent more a little more time thinking this one through. Nigaz? Really? For all the times that I mentioned the word right above, this name is just plain wrong.
Via Ben who said, “First rung on the ‘probably not the best name for a company’ ladder”

politics

On Iran

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There is so much going on right now to comment about regarding Iran – the protests, the internal and external reactions, what this means for the future, etc. Believe it or not, Jimmy Fallon said it best:

“Well, the results from Iran’s presidential elections are in. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared victory. But his opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, is claiming ballot fraud and wants an investigation. If that doesn’t work, he’s planning on making a documentary about global warming.”