Names, Words, Success, and Acronyms

            In an apocryphal anecdote, Cole Porter's mother added a singular "A" to Cole Porter's name because she had heard that people whose name spelled a word were more successful in life.  If there is indeed that much power in the initials of a name we may be left to wonder how much intentional or coincidental gematriya was employed in the selection of the center initial.  If we assume that Ms. Porter was set on both the name "Cole" and wanted her son to have only three initials then she would only have had two options, "A" and "U."  By going with "A" she chose the first letter of the alphabet, perhaps indicating that she wanted her son to be "first" in whatever he did.  But she also chose a far more common letter and ladled her son with a seemingly symbolically unremarkable name. 

            By the same standards my own name dooms me to insignificance, but perhaps not as extreme as my parents LMF, NPF, or my brother, DJF.  My brother currently has nearly 18000 followers on twitter.  Imagine how many he could have if my parents had the foresight to make sure his middle name started with “a” (daf: a Persian drum resembling a tambourine, but without the cymbals).  My Uncle Steve, accepted as a success within my family and the statistician community, has the only set of initials with a readily pronounceable unit; SEF. 

A cursory check of Forbes’ top 100 most wealthy people for 2012 indicates that not a single one of those billionaires has a name which spells a word.  Of course there are many other indicators of success which are measured in more elusive individual ways.  For instance, I was unable to find a list of the top 100 happiest people in the world, or the most satisfied.  No certain conclusions can be drawn from this list.  The survey of the forbes list indicates that whether your name represents an esteemed acronym, common word, or even, a clean slate, success is still a possibility.  Clearly there are possibilities for further research.

Choice acronyms for each of my family members presented in alphabetical order, followed by the total number of acronyms (as listed on acronyms.thefreedictionary.com):

DJF - Daniel James Fienberg

Divorced Jewish Female

Djibouti Franc (ISO currency code)

Total: 2

LMF - Lorne Michael Fienberg

Lacking Moral Fiber

Library Management Facility

Light Manufacturing Facility

Logical Mainframe

Lutheran Ministries of Florida

Total: 15

NPF - Nona Paula Fienberg

National Park Foundation

National Peanut Festival

Nigerian Police Force

No Problem Found

Nuclear Power Facility

Total: 24

OJF - Ori Joseph Fienberg

Online Job Facility

Order of Sir John Franklin

Total: 3

5 Months of Notepads

Last night, at the Prudential Center's Barnes and Noble, my Mom, apparently not remembering this post asked me again why I don't use Moleskine notepads.

The simple reason is that they just don't meet my needs, as I outlined in the previous blog post. This picture, which includes a handful of the notepads I've been filling over the past few months, illustrates another reason that I didn't think of before: variety. Moleskines are classy, but they're also fairly staid. I think they make a few in pastel colors, or other "designer" editions (with corresponding designer prices). There's something highly pleasing to me about having different notepads with different colors and designs; it reminds of the pleasurable chaos of ideas coming into being. I just can't imagine being as happy going through a homogenous stack...

And it's for Charity!

Selections from the Music & Entertainment section of CharityBuzz:

Justin Timberlake Personalized Steinway Baby Grand Piano

Meet Lady Gaga at the Concert of Your Choice with Two VIP tickets

I think the piano is the biggest ticket item available in that section, while the Lady Gaga offering is the one where the bids have already most exceeded the estimated value.

What I deem important

Let's review the list released on Monday of GOP leaders' objections to "wasteful spending" in the Senate version of the approximately 900 billion dollar stimulus.

Here's a handful of the items they consider wasteful:

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

I haven't been able to find more specific information on the complaints, so it's possible that they have concerns about the allocation or amount. Maybe they even think that we should be dedicating more money to certain things. We spend billions each year on health problems caused by smoking, maybe they want to double, or triple the amount for smoking cessation.

If only that were the case. As it stands it seems Republican leadership is against human waste management, std prevention, flood prevention, and museums.

The biggest earmarks they object to:
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.
• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
• $850 million for Amtrak.

I think it would be fantastic if federal buildings were greened, but even I'm surprised by the price tag. This is the biggest item on the list, and I wonder how far down the line of federal buildings they plan on going. Is this just for buildings in Washington, or would this also cover greening for the Johnson County Courthouse?

I'm also willing to admit that the earmark for FutureGen is a little suspect. It's based in Illinois, the only state specific earmark on this list. And it was defunded. However, I support it in theory. Maybe this would be better included in another stimulus package or Act more clearly focused on green energy and alternative fuel.

I'd like to support Amtrak, but before I do that they'd have to convince me that Amtrak is accessible. If there was an Amtrack station within 30 minutes of where I live that could take me to Chicago and beyond that would be great, but the closest Amtrak station is an hour and half away, and I doubt that 850 million dollars will be enough to open many new locations, if the allocation is for that anyway. Now if they were trying to create a national public railway in order to create more jobs and provide affordable and accessible transportation I'd be all over that.

The rest of the big and small ticket items on this list are a pretty good indicator of why I'm not a Republican, and I hope some would be mystifying even to conservatives. I mean, c'mon. We're talking about a 900 billion dollar package. These were really the most damning instances of pork-barrel spending Republicans could find? We're talking about less than 2% of the total package, with most of these for essential human services or money saving green energy initiatives.

For more on this issue check out these sites:

The Wonk Room
Paul Krugman: Bad Faith Economics

I tried to find an alternate take on a conservative blog, but all I found were 100 different sites with the same message: Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Pay to Play

Just a little anti-shout-out to Narrative Magazine.

Publishing resource after resource instructs authors to avoid magazine where you have to submit a reading fee, and yet Narrative Magazine is still heralded as a beacon of online literary journal legitimacy. From their own submissions page:

"The reading fee is $20 for prose manuscripts, $10 for up to five poems, and $10 for audio submissions."

They try to justify this by pointing out that this is less than the subscription fee for many literary journals. However, I'm not aware of any online publications that require a subscription. You just go to the website and read as much as you want. That's as opposed to the Narrative website, for which you must create a log-in profile before you can access full pieces. Leaving aside that argument I can't think of another reputable literary journal that charges writers to submit. The closest I can find is The Missouri Review, which has a $3 fee for online submissions, but they still offer the option of submitting in hard-copy with no fee. Narrative's $10 fee for audio submissions is especially ridiculous, given that you're not supposed to send in audio of more than five minutes. Five minutes of audio is roughly equivalent to 500 words, or two double spaced pages.


Narrative further tries to justify its fee by referencing their non-profit status and the fact that they pay contributors, however the numbers just don't add up. Part of the appeal of starting an online literary journal is that it only costs at most a few hundred dollars every year, with maybe a one time cost web-designer cost if you want your journal to be extra snazzy. On Narrative, if your story is selected as a "story of the week" they'll pay you $150 (after your $20 fee). While this is more than any other online publication, it's not more than many print publications. When I had a poem accepted in Subtropics they paid me $200 (Narrative pays a max of $50 for poems), and no one ever has to pay a submission fee.

Furthermore, Narrative features a page listing the Narrative Circle, Friends, Patrons, Donors, and support from readers . If we assume the minimum contributions for each level than before we even get to Donors the total contribution is at or over $241,000. That's a pretty large chunk of change to still be charging a submission fee.

And while there is proof positive that they publish new and emerging authors, they also regularly feature work by best-selling authors. This issue includes T.C. Boyle and Anne Beattie. There's nothing wrong with publishing well established writers. In fact it's great to have the balance, and provides a special thrill to the emerging writers who appear in their company. But I wonder... Does T.C. Boyle have to pay $20 when he submits a short story? And then does he only get the standard $150-200, or does he get a little more...

For further discussion check out the articles on these blogs:


Wet Asphalt

and

Arts and Palaver

Forcing already under-paid writers to pay a submission fee when your journal has hundreds of thousands of dollars of donor support? Not what O.J. would do, if he did it.

-O.J.