Now that we're talking about the 1927 silent film "King of Kings," we must take note of Ayn Rand.

We were talking about "King of Kings," because we were talking about what Jesus wrote in the sand, because various blogs were talking about an Islamist Facebook page with a cartoon showing how to carry out a stoning. I started to wonder whether the first commenter who mentioned "King of Kings" was talking about the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille picture or the 1961 Nicholas Ray flick. So I'm over here on the King of Kings (1927 film) page at Wikipedia, and I see:

Sally Rand, before becoming notorious for her "fan dance" at the 1933 World's Fair, was an extra in the film.

Ayn Rand (no relation to Sally Rand) also was an extra in the film, and met her future husband Frank O'Connor on set.

I couldn't find a YouTube clip of Ayn Rand in "King of Kings," but I did find Sally Rand and her notorious World's Fair fan dance:



I also found this 2009 New Yorker article about Ayn Rand that covers the "King of Kings" phase:

Rand... left the U.S.S.R. for America.... Her vision of the U.S. had already been shaped by obsessive moviegoing.... Even before leaving the Soviet Union, she had published a pamphlet on the silent-film actress Pola Negri, and like a movie star herself she now refashioned “Rosenbaum” into her own new name. Heller and Burns both knock down the myth that a Remington-Rand typewriter inspired the rechristening.

There is a greater factual basis to the legend of Rand’s having met Cecil B. DeMille before she worked as an extra on his production of “The King of Kings” (1927). On the set, Rand persuaded a costume director to promote her from a crowd of beggars to a crowd of patricians, and DeMille had his story chief look at her film scenarios, which were soon judged over the top. Rand achieved steadier success working in the R.K.O. wardrobe department, and then had a writerly breakthrough with a courtroom murder drama called “Night of January 16th.” Thanks to a gimmick that allowed each night’s audience to serve as the jury and thereby choose the ending, the play made it to Broadway, where Rand railed against the producers’ subordination of its incidental messages about the beauty of unbridled individualism.

Settling in New York with her husband, Frank O’Connor (another “King of Kings” extra), Rand set seriously to work on the first of her two major novels, “The Fountainhead.”....

How do you feel about all those connections? The Soviet Union, the love of movies, immigration to the land of movies, name-changing, finding the love of your life on a movie set in Hollywood, strippers performing what is only the illusion of nakedness, and... Jesus.

Brilliant animation, beginning with the story of a boy getting the nickname "Pork Chop."

This is very fast-moving and will be especially cool if you don't know where it's going:



(Details about the video here.)

"By naming the tragedy 12/14, we honor the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting, their families and their town. 12/14."

"Think it. Say it. Help Newtown heal."

I'm sorry, but no. If we take that approach, history will turn into numerical code and erstwhile ordinary days on the calendar will pop up each year as doomsdays, depressing some people and luring the crazies into copycatism.

Big events are normally named by the place where they happen, unless they are storms that we see coming and we name them like babies, when they are still cute like babies and haven't, like teenagers, shown their horrible tendencies.

9/11 was the exception to the rule, and this past year we got another 9/11 attack, in Benghazi. What do you do when these things pile up on the same day? It's not even random. The day fires up the imagination and focuses plans. I don't want a famous school massacre day called 12/14!

Protect our days, so that they continue to dawn as fresh new days, innocent and full of potential. Or let individuals infuse them with good memories, anniversaries of happiness like weddings and births.

"Then David said to Abigail 'Blessed is your advice and blessed are you.'"

"Mrs. Phillips chose her pen name herself, taking Abigail after the prophetess in the Book of Samuel... and Van Buren for its old-family, presidential ring."

Pauline Phillips — "Dear Abby" — dead at the age of 94.

The argument for letting your hair grow long and white as you age and not getting any facial surgery or Botox.

From 83-year-old "supermodel" Daphne Selfe. (Great name, by the way.)

Selfe, who went gray in her 40s, gave up coloring her hair and decided to let it grow.

“My hair is long now because it’s cheaper. I don’t have to do anything but put it in a topknot or a French pleat,” she said. “It avoids that old lady permed look, lengthens the neck and lifts the face.”

"After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears."

When is a door not a door?/When it's a jar. That was my favorite childhood riddle, evoked by today's Gatsby sentence. There's that door that Mr. Gatz opened, and yet it's his mouth, not the door, that's ajar.  

Gatz... it's a name like an expletive, an expletive seemingly concocted out the name Gatsby. Who is this debased alter ego of the main character? I can't say, because the Gatsby project is all about looking at one isolated sentence. Our sentence is isolated, like a tear leaking unpunctually from one of Gatz's eyes.

So here's Gatz, the man with a name like an expletive, not that anything's coming out of his open — ajar — mouth. We hear a lot about his face — it's flushed slightly — and that mouth is ajar, and then there are those crying eyes. But what a way to describe crying eyes: leaking isolated and unpunctual tears.

That the tears are isolated and unpunctual sheds — sheds! — light on the beginning of the sentence: After a little while. This sentence is all about delay. There's the little while before Gatz emerges, and there are the belated — unpunctual — tears. Gatz acts: He opens the door. But he doesn't do the action of crying. His eyes are the subject of the verb, but even his eyes don't cry. They leak. A strangely passive sort of crying. And those tears, they're not only failing to live up to the requirements of timeliness — being unpunctual — they are also isolated. Isolated... not merely minimal, but also lonely.

Isolated is a word that appears only one other time in "The Great Gatsby": "They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity." Ah, but that's another sentence!

"In a country comfortable with a firm state role, most people don't question the Personal Names Register, a list of 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names..."

"... that fit Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules and that officials maintain will protect children from embarrassment. Parents can take from the list or apply to a special committee that has the power to say yea or nay."

In Blaer's case, her mother said she learned the name wasn't on the register only after the priest who baptized the child later informed her he had mistakenly allowed it.

"I had no idea that the name wasn't on the list, the famous list of names that you can choose from," said Bjork Eidsdottir, adding she knew a Blaer whose name was accepted in 1973. This time, the panel turned it down on the grounds that the word Blaer [which means "light breeze" in Icelandic] takes a masculine article, despite the fact that it was used for a female character in a novel by Iceland's revered Nobel Prize-winning author Halldor Laxness.

Parents express themselves through their naming of children. There are many things parents do to children that are expressive. To some extent, we intercede on behalf of the children. Where would you draw the line? In this case, the child is now 15, and she says she loves her name.

Finally, after all these years, not since the 90s, we will have a name for our decade!

I just realized that with the arrival of 2013, a great void will be filled. There will be an end to the lack of a name for the decade. With '13, will be in The Teens!

Don't tell me we had a name for the first decade of the new millennium. We talked a lot about what it would be called, and then it came and instead of calling it something, we just worked around the lack of a name. Don't tell me we called it the "ohs" or the "aughts." We did not. And we entered the second decade of the new millennium with the same problem. 2010, 2011, 2012... Don't tell me we called that the "tens." Obviously, we didn't.

Relief from the torment of namelessness arrives on Tuesday. Don't worry about 13 being unlucky. That's superstition. I am talking about real life. We need a name for a decade. I have fond memories tied with the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s. There's pizzazz and warmth and eclat and resonance in those terms. We've been empty and hungry for 13 years. The gnawing craving for meaning is over.

It's the Teens!

A map depicting each country in the world with the single word that appears most often...

... on that country's "History of..." page in Wikipedia (excluding the country's own name along with some list of common words like "the" and "was"). The project seems designed to throw "war" in our faces, so what I found interesting was looking for whatever isn't war. For example, Australia gets "new." Here's the big image of the map for your inspection.

Only one has 2 have the name of an individual human being. Not North Korea, because "Kim" isn't just one person. And, no, kids, Monte Video is not a guy, though he sounds like an amusing guy. That's Montevideo, broken into 2 lines. You knew that, but don't be so pleased with yourself, because, chances are you don't know one thing about the history of... Do you even know where Montevideo is?

Maybe a good project would be those "History of..." pages, not just for their most common words — WAR! — but to have had it run through your head, at least once, what happened in all of those places. Do you know how many pages we are talking about? The number of members in the United Nations is not the right answer, but do you know that number? It's 193. Wikipedia lists 206 sovereign states (including those with disputed sovereignty).

Let's make a New Year's resolution: Each day, read one Wikipedia "History of..." page. Will you join me? We'll go in alphabetical order, and I'll prompt you with blog posts.

Will you join me?
	No. I don't care about history spread out thin like that.
	No. I know enough history to get by.
	No. I've got a better history reading project.
	Kind of. I'll read what you put in blog posts and maybe click through a bit.
	Kind of. I won't make a resolution, and I'll glance at things now and then.
	Yes, to the extent that I'll read the blog posts, and I might do more.
	Yes, I'll commit to going to all the pages and skimming them, as long as you keep linking.
	Yes, I'm so into this that I'll go to each page, even on my own, and read it all.
pollcode.com free polls

The pre-blizzard.

The blizzard is scheduled to arrive later this morning. This was the pre-blizzard.



I love the way the snow plow deposited a special huge snow boulder right at the end of our driveway. We — meaning Meade — need to get that out of the way before the real storm comes. The storm has a name: Draco. When did winter storms start getting names? And why Draco?

What do you think of when you read the name, "Draco?" Do you picture a dragon because you studied Latin? Or do you jump to Greece because you are an historian? Or do you turn to law because Draco was the first "lawgiver?" Or do you combine all three reasons and pop right to "Draconian?"

The weatherfolk probably had fun naming the first, named blizzard. Why did they skip the alphabetical process used for hurricanes?

Haven'T.

A boy's name. Is it worse than Burger? Donathan? Espn!?

The phenomenon of people naming their kid after ESPN isn't new. It's actually been going on for years now, which is what makes it so alarming. This name has roots now. This is a mainstay. A CLASSIC. Two years from now, it will give way to Espyn and nothing will make sense anymore.

"I managed to get my head up and scream 'croc' and then this giant dragged me under again."

"I got my head above water again and this time I was swearing and saying get this thing off me. I was just screaming for help. I couldn't feel any pain but I could see his teeth sinking into my leg. I thought I was going to die. I could only see about four centimetres of the top of my leg and the rest was in the croc's gob."

Well, clearly she survived, since we have that quote, but how did she survive? (The saltwater crocodile was 3 meters long.) Her friend on the shore — Al Sartori — went in:

"I jumped into the water and on to its back and stuck my thumbs into its eyes until I felt it start to slacken off.... I picked up the croc and chucked it back into the water and it came back at me. It was pretty heavy."

Great heroism by Satori! A euonym? "Satori is considered a 'first step' or embarkation toward nirvana."

The student's mind must be prepared by rigorous study, with the use of koans, and the practice of meditation to concentrate the mind, under the guidance of a teacher.... Chinese Zen master Wumen Hui-k'ai (無門慧開)... struggled for six years with koan "Zhaozhou’s dog"...

The koan is: "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" Does a crocodile?

Wumen, having understood the koan wrote this poem:

A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.

I know a poem about a crocodile:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

"The Middleton chapter of Gilda's Club is changing its name to Cancer Support Community Southwest Wisconsin."

"Officials said one reason is because some people might not know who Radner was.... There are 56 chapters around the world. Twenty are known as Gilda's Club, three are Wellness Community and 23 are Cancer Support Community."

The super-expensive Starbucks coffee from Costa Rica called "Geisha."

"We have loyal reserve customers who are interested in any opportunity to try something as rare and exquisite as the Geisha varietal," said Starbucks spokeswoman Lisa Passe.

Names, names, names. First of all: Lisa Passe. I love it! The name Lisa peaked hugely in 1960, when it hit #1 for female newborns. It crashed immediately after and almost no one names a baby Lisa anymore. It's passé. So Lisa Passe is a perfect euonym for someone passing off something outmoded.

Second: Geisha. From Costa Rica. Even if the varietal was already called Geisha, Starbucks did not need to adopt that branding. It chose it. Why? You emphasize that it's a particular coffee from Costa Rica, and you brand it with a word associated with Japan. What's worse than the geographic mismatch is the gender. It's a word that connotes a female catering poshly to a male.

Here's the Oxford English Dictionary definition, in full: "A Japanese girl whose profession is to entertain men by dancing and singing; loosely, a Japanese prostitute." Here's a long Wikipedia article about geishas. I'm not fussing over the details of whether geishas are prostitutes or not or how much power and autonomy they maintain today or in bygone eras. I'm just saying: What the hell kind of Starbucks branding is this?

Now, the product must be intended to appeal to women. High-priced items with a strong emotional, mental element creating the worth — they have to be speaking to women. But Geisha is not a word that should inspire females to hand over their money. You should be giving me money. A lot of money.

Does Starbucks assume its customers are if not dumb then free-floating in the present, unconnected to information of a geographical and historical kind? They're not really this dumb...



... are they?

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

There's some risk that a Geisha Venti would mean blow job. 

Recycling your turkey-frying oil in Madison, Wisconsin for the greater good of America and the world.

A City of Madison news release:

"We know that there are many people who have lots of oil left over after frying their Thanksgiving turkey," Madison recycling coordinator George Dreckmann said. "We are very excited to be able to offer them a chance to turn that old cooking oil into fuel for cars and trucks in our area."

Dreckmann — a euonym! The Oxford English Dictionary defines "dreck" — from Yiddish drek (German dreck) filth, dregs, dung — as "Rubbish, trash, worthless debris":

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 491 Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
1947 Horizon Feb. 90 The anonymous countryside littered with heterogeneous dreck.
1965 E. Lacy Double Trouble v. 58 Drek your dolls are!.. I wouldn't stick my customers with such junk!...

Back to the press release:

"Every year thousands of gallons of old cooking oil is tossed in the landfill or flushed down the drain. Since we began our cooking oil program we have recovered over thousands [sic] of cooking oil" Dreckmann said. "Now we can recover this resource and use it to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and cut air pollution."

Cooking oil must be brought to the 1501 W. Badger Rd. or 4602 Sycamore Av....

So hundreds/thousands of citizens with their gallon jugs of used oil will get in their cars and drive to the oil collection site and then various unseen processes will be applied to convert that stuff into something useful. Is there a net benefit to the environment and to the American economy? I don't know, but think how wonderful it is that the nice people of Madison can feel good about themselves (after they went ahead and deep-fried the turkey instead of just roasting it).

Oh, Althouse, why are you so cynical?!  I'm sorry. Let me paint a different picture. The turkey-frying Madisonian hangs gallon jugs of used oil on his handlebars and bikes down South Park Street to Badger Road.

"Now that legal pot is here, will cigarette companies dust off their old plans for mass commercialization?"

NPR explores the coming of legal marijuana:

In the '70s... "there were high-level conversations about adding marijuana to tobacco, creating a line of marijuana cigarettes, and being ready to jump in and market this."

As recently as 1993, when it looked like France was poised to legalize marijuana, Philip Morris trademarked the name "Marley." But when the estate of Bob Marley complained, the company claimed it had nothing to do with the reggae singer.

"Philip Morris said, 'No no, it could be any kind of Marley,... like Jacob Marley, the cheap, cantankerous teetotaler from A Christmas Carol.'"...

Want legal marijuana? Write to the President:

Obama campaign: "Ann -- This is cool: You can see exactly how many people named Ann have already voted."

"Take a look at that. Then share it with your friends so they can see how many people with their names have voted, too -- and look up their polling place. Bottom line: We need every Ann -- and everyone else, too -- to make it out to the polls to support President Obama."

Another email trying to leverage social media. This one provides a link to the Obama campaign website with the supposedly enticing teaser "How many people with your name have voted already?" To get the answer, you have to click on a button that takes you to a page where you're supposed to log into Facebook, and the fine print says:

THIS APP WILL RECEIVE:
Your basic info
Your email address (althouse@wisc.edu)
Your profile info: birthday, likes and location
Your photos
Friends' profile info: birthdays, likes and locations
Photos shared with you

And: "By proceeding, you agree to Obama 2012's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy ..."

So if you fell for the fun idea of seeing your damned name connected to a number and impulsively logged into Facebook, you just gave the campaign all that personal information and you agreed to... who knows what?

Active Collection: Personal information may be collected in a number of ways when you visit our Sites. We collect certain information you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you create an account or a profile, make a donation, make a purchase, send us an email or sign up to receive email or text message updates, fill out a form, connect through a social feed, sign up to be a volunteer or host an event, request information, apply for an internship, or use a voter registration form tool. Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, geographic location, and credit card information. We may also collect demographic information you may voluntarily provide from time to time, such as in response to questionnaires and surveys, including gender, ethnicity, education, and interest information. If this information is tied to personally identifiable information, it will be treated as personal information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites. We may also obtain information from other sources and combine that with information we collect on our Sites.

Does that boldface say they are mining the text of email and messages sent on Facebook for personal information?

Ann — this is cool...

The future is cool. Big Brother loves you is cool.

"If they named their cat/dog/goldfish after Kierkegaard Imma puke!"

Said Amartel in the comments to yesterday's post, which was titled with a quote from a Chelsea Clinton tweet: "Marc, Soren and I are at home with candles, kindles and canned food!"

Hang onto your breakfast, Amartel. Here's a NYT article from last December:

[Marc] Mezvinsky, a former Goldman Sachs banker, will soon start a hedge fund with a friend. The couple’s apartment, shared with a miniature Yorkshire terrier named Soren, after the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, is said to be overflowing with books. On the phone from Arkansas, Ms. Clinton talked about her husband’s continuous support and their habit of talking “about everything, almost sometimes ad nauseam.”

How's your nauseam now, Amartel?

***

"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both."

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either name your dog after a Danish philosopher or after a generic southern guy. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do one or the other — people will needle you about both.

***

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either vote for Barack Obama or not. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.

"I do not know Nate Silver. I have never spoken to Nate Silver."

"I do not know how old Nate Silver is or anything about Nate Silver’s existence. I am not even sure Nate Silver is his real name. That sounds like a stage name, one that a numbers geek would pick because he secretly dreams of being a cowboy...."

Finn, Asher, Henry, Milo, Jasper, James, Jude, Atticus, Rowan, Owen.

The first 10 of the top 100 boys' names for 2012, from Nameberry, which is "geared to non-traditional but deeply-rooted boys' names":

Celebrities and pop culture are important, but not as important as for girls. We see Finn, partially inspired by "Glee," at No. 1 and Atticus in the Top 10 thanks to "To Kill A Mockingbird." While other names - Jude, Liam, Emmett, Hudson, Arlo - have risen on the heels of popular stars, celebrity babies, and movie and TV characters - we see this influence on boys' names less pronounced than on girls'.

Boys' names are getting softer. The whole badass boys' name - Stryker, Wilder, Maverick - thing aside, we see a softening of boys' names, with vowel endings (Milo, Levi, Ezra), sibilant sounds (Asher, Dashiell, Sebastian), and choices that are derived from girls' names or can also be used for girls (Rowan, Emerson, Elliot).