The excellent Dawn points our attention to a column by Rick Reilly* on the lack of attention to women’s achievements in sports and a call to vigilance for Title IX.

*Also the author of the excellent sports novel Slo Mo! My Untrue Story.

From Washington State Vital Statistics 2001, the top ten baby names in the state in 2001:

girls:

Emily

Madison

Hannah

Emma

Grace

Olivia

Elizabeth

Samantha

Sarah

Ashley

boys:

Jacob

Joshua

Ethan

Michael

Andrew

Alexander

Daniel

Nicholas

Tyler

Matthew

The list in the book, from the Department of Health, lists the top 100, with percentages and raw numbers. The odder names are further down the list, with some broken up by different spellings. Well, I say odd perhaps only because I don’t watch soap operas.

Today’s book of the day is “Diaper Free! The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene” by Ingrid Bauer. Yes, it’s chock full of “wisdom” on how to hold your baby over a receptacle when your intuition alerts you to their need to eliminate. Lavishly illustrated with black and white photos of white people with dreadlocks, tattoos or organic cotton clothing bonding with their widdling babies, holding them over toilets, mixing bowls, or the great outdoors.

Seen today, on the back of a pickup truck, a sticker shaped like those tree air-fresheners, but with a stars and stripes pattern. I’m stumped. Is it supposed to indicate patriotism with a piney fresh scent? But it’s not actually scented, cause it’s a sticker.

Sometimes this blog is for you, my loyal readers, but much of the time it’s just for me. Here’s a list of library blogs I wish to peruse later this week. People who write blogs that have crazy fans instead of loyal readers sometimes get lavish gifts. If any of you is even slightly crazy, please send me a working scanner. I’ll post all sorts of crazy shit from my vast collection of thrifted cookbooks.

(OK, my scanner works, it just has a strange band of color distortion partway down every image. It was free with my computer.)

Oh wow, man. This blog should keep me happy for the rest of the night. Tardblog. Memepool totally rocks.

And may I add (later) that the tardfaq totally sums up my job, too. I love my job, but if I didn’t make fun of some of my patrons and co-workers in my off time, I would totally lose it. But I won’t be making a blog of it- my blog is how I escape… whee!

“The lion is a deadly, wild beast. Hey, why don’t you stick your hand in her mouth?” Lots of good quotes in this one. I think my favorite right now is “The limb was not recovered because other lions pounced on it.”

Apologies to both our loyal readers for the lack of new content lately. Family illness and a slow news season have interfered with keeping up. Speaking of the State of the Union et al., I wonder (he asked, semi-rhetorically) if people actually in the nuclear industry are any more or less likely to mispronounce “nuclear.” Based on my observations (including the Bush dynasty), people associated with the CIA are far more likely to say “nucular” and do not take well to correction (no, I’ve never tried to correct a Bush).

Note: The first bush article linked above indicates that Bush Sr did not mispronounce “nuclear.” I thought I remembered otherwise, but could well be mistaken.

So, of course, on the night that there’s an internet-wide (as far as I’ve heard) Denial of Service attack underway, I have the midnight to eight on-call shift. Yawn.

Apparently, extremely dire things are happening in Hong Kong. This is from my usual source of things that leave me speechless. Check out the schematics, though.