Wordlab: February 2004: The Free Business Resource for Naming and Branding

Loo with a view: You know what they say about people in glass outhouses. They must be stoned.

Posted by abnu on Friday, February 27, 2004 @ 4:02 PM [ + ]

Juice boxing: Since Coke owns MinuteMaid and Pepsi owns Tropicana, it's not surprising that the orange juice battle between them is being fought in the same way as their long-standing cola war, which is further identical to the marketing skirmish between Dasani (Coke) and Aquafina (Pepsi) bottled water.

Both companies are committed to shadowing each other's moves, resulting in products and brands that are virtually indistinguishable. The dueling carafes below were predictable:

Simply Orange, by MinuteMaid, has a cleaner, more effective label. The messaging on the Tropicana carafe is too busy; watch for it to get cleaned-up and for the illustration of the orange on the label to increase in size. Since MinuteMaid has perhaps half the market share of Tropicana in the non-frozen category, they will be "taking chances" and Tropicana will be reacting.

POM Wonderful

An interesting new player in the juice business is POM. The pomegranate juice is called POM Wonderful after a variety of pomegranates. Other blended varieties are just called POM, but "Wonderful" is carried over throughout the messaging. The packaging is unique, and the sales pitch is anchored in the health benefits of antioxidants. At 26 cents per fluid ounce, POM is 3 to 4 times more expensive than national orange juice brands.

POM is leveraging several points of contact in differentiating its brand. The name "Pom" gives consumers a short and sweet way to get a handle on the rather awkward mouthful, "pomegranate juice." It also helps make the idea of trying it less scary. Don't be surprised if "pom juice" is adopted by the public as shorthand for all pomegranate juice, giving POM a big advantage over their inevitable competitors. POM's tagline, DRINK TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT?, works on two levels: It reinforces the health benefits of the juice and plays off of an emotional idiom.

If all that weren't enough, we've posted a new Juice Name Taxonomy over at Igor. Drink it up.

Posted by Jay on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 @ 10:20 AM [ + ]

Phat Tuesday: This year, it's Grey Tuesday, a day of protest for copyright reform in the music industry organized online by the music activism project, Downhill Battle. The impetus for this day of protest is set out on the Grey Tuesday website. Here's what they want you to know:

DJ Danger Mouse created a remix of Jay-Z's the Black Album and the Beatles White Album, and called it the Grey Album. Jay-Z's record label, Roc-A-Fella, released an a capella version of his Black Album specifically to encourage remixes like this one. But despite praise from music fans and major media outlets like Rolling Stone ("an ingenious hip-hop record that sounds oddly ahead of its time") and the Boston Globe (which called it the "most creatively captivating" album of the year), EMI has sent cease and desist letters demanding that stores destroy their copies of the album and websites remove them from their site. EMI claims copyright control of the Beatles 1968 White Album.

Danger Mouse?s album is one of the most "respectful" and undeniably positive examples of sampling; it honors both the Beatles and Jay-Z. Yet the lawyers and bureaucrats at EMI have shown zero flexibility and not a glimmer of interest in the artistic significance of this work. And without a clearly defined right to sample (e.g. compulsory licensing), the five major record labels will continue to use copyright in a reactionary and narrowly self-interested manner that limits and erodes creativity. Their actions are also self-defeating: good new music is being created that people want to buy, but the major labels are so obsessed with hoarding their copyrights that they are literally turning customers away.

If you want to listen to this music, go to any of the websites that are hosting the DJ Danger Mouse Grey Album in protest on February 24, 2004. If you want to follow the legal battle, you can check out Tech Law Advisor, which is following the controversy and commenting from a legal perspective.

Evan Schaeffer is an attorney whose blawg, Notes from the (Legal) Underground, asks the question, "Can lawyers be entertaining?" Evan gives us pretty good evidence that the answer to that question is "fo' shizzle" with a creative post that offers "More Remix Ideas for DJ Danger Mouse" using a formula: a rock album, plus a rap album, suggesting a remix concept alluding to the copyright brouhaha.

Rush?s All the World?s a Stage +
Black Moon?s Enta Da Stage =
Danger Mouse?s I'm at Center Stage

Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food +
Snoop Dogg?s Dogg Food =
Danger Mouse's The Building Feud

America's Human Nature +
Naughty by Nature's Naughty by Nature =
Danger Mouse's My Naughty Human Nature

Kid Rock?s Devil Without a Cause +
Paris?s The Devil Made Me Do It =
Danger Mouse?s I Did it Just Because

Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels +
Grandmaster Flash?s Adventures on the Wheels of Steel =
Danger Mouse?s We All Steal

Supertramp?s Breakfast in America +
Schoolly D?s Welcome to America =
Danger Mouse?s Welcome to a Lawsuit in America

This wordplay is such a good example of the kind of creative thinking we all enjoy at Wordlab that we asked for Evan's permission to sample his blawg for our Wordlab post on Grey Tuesday. Perhaps we didn't have to ask for permission, but we thought it was the right thing to do.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 @ 12:07 AM [ + ]

Lost In Translation: "The Spirit of American Style" is the current advertising slogan for Buick, and recent campaigns to introduce this slogan invoke ghostly apparitions of Harley Earl, the father of modern automotive design in America.

An article titled "The Style of American Spirit" presents the slogan from a different perspective:

But when I think of the modified 1959 Buick that recently departed the shores of Cuba to cut through the waves of the Gulf of Mexico, carrying its eleven passengers towards America, and freedom, "spirit of American style" seems almost right. Unquestionably, the Cubans who sailed the open seas in a Buick demonstrated the Style of the American Spirit.

These autonauts were not deterred when their previous attempt, in a converted '51 Chevy, failed to provide them the ideal vehicle to "see the U.S.A." One can only imagine Harley Earl in their minds, quietly advising on each redesign, as they went back to their garages in Havana to create the perfect vehicle to achieve the American dream.

Re-engineers who convert classic land yachts into immigrant boats are called truckonauts, a clumsy word that doesn't do justice to their craft. Apparently, this new English word is a rough translation of the more elegant Spanish word, camionauta. These new words can be found online at Word Spy, which is now also available in print at better bookstores in the free world.

Posted by abnu on Sunday, February 22, 2004 @ 2:20 PM [ + ]

Go figure: In the world of mergers and acquisitions, stock valuation is one thing; brand equity is another.

The hostile takeover of Disney by Comcast could result in one of the world's largest media conglomerates. While the stock market tries to make sense of this proposed merger, branding pundits and big name comics are speculating in The New York Times about the potential marriage of these brands -- suggesting new names like Versacorp or Pixaren't.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions create more naming challenges than a San Francisco wedding. Let's not hear of Comcast Disney, or Disney.comcast.com. After the corporate marriage difficulties and recent separation of AOL and Time Warner brands, customer-focused branding just might prevail over corporate megalomania in a Comcast takeover of Disney. But it's not that easy. Disney brings a dysfunctional family of great individual brands to Comcast, a name that sucks, itself.

In branding theory and practise, there are strong case studies to support different approaches to brand management of multi-brands by mega-corporations. Many success stories can be studied from the Procter & Gamble family of individual product brands. Sony is the classic example of successful branding under a single corporate name. There are many others. In an article titled "Company Brand vs. Individual Brand: Which Way to Go?" published by Business Know-How, the arguments pro and con are outlined:

The practice of keeping a multitude of individual brands, as well as sticking to the company brand to identify products of diverse range of categories, have long defined branding strategies in marketing history. Each comes with its own advantages and drawbacks, spurred primarily by nature of business, social and economic environment, and consumer perceptions

Disney is one of the greatest brands ever, but in recent years the name of the founder has been misdirected toward share value for stockholders rather than brand value for customers. Disney should stick to its core brand value proposition. Walt Disney didn't conceive the company to be a great investment opportunity for the street. Comcast should be the name of the publicly traded corporate parent. But, it's not the best possible name for its own consumer-oriented business. The cable business now marketed under the Comcast name should be rebranded for consumer consumption as Go, using Disney's Go.com Internet property, which has been ineffectively positioned by corporate Disney as an umbrella brand. That positioning has never worked well for Disney, Go, or the sheltered individual brands. All the brands currently in the Go Network: ABC, ESPN, Family Fun and Movies.com, along with Touchstone and Miramax, should be reorganized as differentiated brands under the corporate structure of Comcast. Go figure.

The name Comcast has never been a world-class brand, but if they pull off this hostile takeover of Disney, Wall Street will love Comcast. Comcast will have a new brand equity on the street, where the customer is the stock investor. To give the lackluster Comcast name a personality that typical Wall Street investors can connect with emotionally, the company might have a new mascot designed by Disney animators: Gordon the Gecko.

Posted by abnu on Thursday, February 19, 2004 @ 10:01 PM [ + ]

Update Alert: Hey Conan, check out the update to the Tuesday, February 10, 2004 post below.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 @ 3:14 PM [ + ]

Jenny's New York Phone Number: It's often been asked, and answered: what's in a name? Seldom has it been asked: what's in a number?

But, ever since Cingular started using Jenny's number in a television ad to promote phone number portability, this phone number seems to have become a really hot little number again -- on ebay.

Jenny don't change your number
Eight six seven five three oh nine
Eight six seven five three oh nine
Eight six seven five three oh nine
Eight six seven five three oh nine

I got it (I got it) I got it
I got your number on the wall
I got it (I got it) I got it

The Cingular television ad doesn't give us the next line: "For a good time, for a good time call."

Posted by abnu on Monday, February 16, 2004 @ 3:45 PM [ + ]

Radio head: An interview I did recently with Mark Ramsey of Mercury Radio Research all about naming and branding for radio stations was just published Friday.

Posted by Jay on Saturday, February 14, 2004 @ 12:06 AM [ + ]

Shadow Walkers: CBS apologized today for any offense taken to the American Indian-motif performance by Outkast at the Grammys. Some people are really on the warpath.

The San Francisco-based Native American Cultural Center (NACC) posted a notice on its Web site this week calling for a boycott of CBS, OutKast's label, Arista Records, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys.

"It was the most disgusting set of racial stereotypes aimed at American Indians that I have ever seen on TV," NACC board member Sean Freitas said in the online statement. "It was on par with white people dancing sexually in black face, or yarmulkes ... I am shocked and outraged."

Actually, Outkast's performance reminded me more of The Village People. A pop culture mainstay of the music scene that is still touring the world, The Village People features the group's stereotypical American Indian, Felipe Rose, performing disco hits.

Felipe is much credited with being the inspiration of putting together a group of people all representing types of New York?s Greenwich Village. His keen visual sense and performance experience led to input and direction for the entire concept of the group representing a true sense of tribal ship. Felipe regards the members of the group as his brothers.

In addition to his continuing performances with The Village People, Felipe is a member of the board of directors of the group's corporate entity Sixuvus Limited, and also has his own recording company called Tomahawk Records. In recent years, Felipe was given the honor of opening performance at the Nammys, The Native American Music Awards.

Felipe Rose is a native New Yorker, having been raised and brought up in Brooklyn. His Puerto Rican and Native American heritage (Lakota Sioux) is reflected in the clothing that he dons to perform. This is not just a costume but also a signifier of where he comes from and his long association with Native American groups across the country. Felipe has been called a ?shadow walker?, a Native term for walking in two worlds.

In the history of music and the performing arts, there are many shadow walkers; Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Eminem, among others. Offense is taken most often, not to their music, but to their crossing of cultural and racial stereotypes. Why can't we all get along like those village people?

Posted by abnu on Friday, February 13, 2004 @ 11:53 PM [ + ]

New York Restaurant Naming Contest: Could you name this joint? They say the person who submits the winning name will receive $2,500, in cash. That's better than a lifetime supply of free falafels.

The full story is in the current issue of The New Yorker. The quick and dirty details are set out in the Press Release reprinted below:

NEW YORK CITY, January 5, 2004 ? Erez Itzhaki and Eric Salomon, the owners of an imminent restaurant located in the East Village of New York City, are running a contest for the public to name their establishment. The winning submission will be awarded a cash prize of $2,500. To enter go to www.name-our-restaurant.com .

Scheduled to open in February, the restaurant will be located at 23 3rd Avenue between St. Mark?s Place and East 9th Street. A sign posted at the site announces the contest and directs participants to the web site for more information. The contest will end on February 9th, by which time a name will be chosen. The restaurant name will be revealed to the public shortly thereafter at the space.

Frustrated at the lack of genuine falafel and quality shawarma (gyro), available locally, Eric Salomon and Erez Itzhaki, real estate developers at ESI capital, hatched the idea to open a restaurant that served these dishes as they taste in Israel ? flavorful, delicious and made of the finest ingredients. For this purpose they?ve brought in experts on Israeli fare and are even installing a pita-baking oven on the premises.

The restaurant will serve impeccably fresh food, perfect for those looking for a quick, healthy and inexpensive meal (most menu items will be less than $5.00). The planned environment will be warm, welcoming and modern ? a great spot to sit and comfortably have a bite. Menu items include Falafel, Kosher Shawarma, Homemade Pita, Made-to-Order Salads and Malabi.

?We?re looking for a name that conveys a high level of quality,? says Erez Itzhaki. ?In brainstorming options for a name, we decided who better to ask than our potential clients? New Yorkers are a creative and opinionated bunch so we put it in their hands.?

According to the "name our restaurant" contest website, you don't need to be a New Yorker to enter their contest. And, as of this writing, the contest deadline for submissions has been extended to February 23, 2004.

So far, they say they've received over 13,000 suggestions. No doubt, they'll get many more names before the contest deadline. As these real estate developers and imminent restauranteurs take the next steps in the process of naming and branding, they'll experience the challenges of sorting through the long list of suggestions to determine which name is the correct choice for this new restaurant. Maybe that's another contest.

And the winner is: chickpea

Posted by abnu on Thursday, February 12, 2004 @ 12:18 AM [ + ]

Trisexual: Madonna kisses Britney and Christina, but they're not lesbians. Some might say that's so gay, but wouldn't suggest they're queer. They can't be metrosexual. That's a guy thing, not a gay thing. Maybe they're just heteroflexible.

Language defining sexual orientation is evolving to meet the needs of society to find more meaningful descriptive words for sexual preferences. The word "homosexual" seems archaic, sometimes, and even the word "gay" seems to be lacking clarity as an indicator of sexual orientation. To get a sense of the linguistic nuances of sexual diversity, read this recent article by San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Rona Marech, who provides detailed definitions for the latest sexual neologisms.

Someone who is "genderqueer," for example, views the gender options as more than just male and female or doesn't fit into the binary male-female system. A "trannydyke" is a transgender person (whose gender is different than the one assigned at birth) attracted to people with a more feminine gender, while a "pansexual" is attracted to people of multiple genders. A "boi" describes a boyish gay guy or a biological female with a male presentation; and "heteroflexible" refers to a straight person with a queer mind-set.

The list of terms -- which have hotly contested definitions -- goes on: "FTM" for female to male, "MTF" for male to female, "boydyke," "trannyboy, " "trannyfag," "multigendered," "polygendered," "queerboi," "transboi," "transguy," "transman," "half-dyke," "bi-dyke," "stud," "stem," "trisexual," "omnisexual," and "multisexual."

Some people explore a broader range of sexual experiences; "trisexuals" try anything once and, if they like it, they'll try it again and again and again.

Posted by abnu on Wednesday, February 11, 2004 @ 12:28 AM [ + ]

Come for the Ride: The contest to name the new fast ferry between Toronto and Rochester has drawn nearly 25,000 entries. Rochesterians submitted thousands more entries than Torontonians, eh.

Canadian American Transportation Systems is preparing to launch the first-class ferry service on its maiden voyage in April. The 284 foot behemoth (the name I like) can accommodate 750 passengers and 238 vehicles, including commercial trucks and buses. It features three bars, movie theatres, play areas for children and dining facilities and will make the two hour trip each way twice a day and more frequently during the tourist season. What better way to garner publicity for the new business than a naming contest offering two lifetime ferry passes to the winners who can come up with a better name than Spirit of Ontario.

Update: This Wordlab post was mentioned in Carnival of the Canucks. Following Conan O'Brien's infamous visit to the Tragic Kingdom of Canuckistan, maybe this new tourist ferry should be named Triumph after the comic insult dog who caused the political outrage some are calling Slobbergate.

Winner Winner Winner: Submitted by an Ogden, NY woman, "The Breeze" will serve only as a nickname. The official name will continue to be "Spirit of Ontario." The company has promised to incorporate the nickname into its advertising, beginning with the use of an additional domain name: www.thebreeze.com, which seems to confirm the suspicion that the naming contest was a publicity stunt.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 @ 5:01 AM [ + ]

The Browser, Rebranded: The need for a new direction in branding the Mozilla project was outlined near the end of last year by Steven Garrity of silverorange:

As the Mozilla project moves towards an end-user focus from a developer and platform focus, the branding and visual identity of the organization and its software will need to be revisited. With the recent separation from Netscape and AOL, the need for the Mozilla project to have a brand of its own is all the more necessary.

Now, the open source Mozilla Foundation has renamed its Firebird browser and released Firefox 0.8. "Take Back the Web" is the mantra of Firefox. It's interesting, and appropriate, that this open source project shares the renaming process with its community as part of the rebranding strategy. Ben Goodger explains:

I wanted to explain this in some detail in the hopes that it might impress upon people how non-trivial the process of picking a name for a high profile project is. Many companies end up buying their names from others. Mozilla as a small non-profit organization can't afford such luxuries. We needed to be smart and cost effective. While I'm sure many people will consider this a misstep or otherwise take issue with the decisions we've made, we think we've done the best we could, and I challenge anyone to reach a better outcome on the same resources.

Garrity, the Visual Design Coordinator for the rebranding project, describes the process of integrating the Firefox name with a new visual identity. Mozilla's new marketing initiative includes a new tagline: Firefox - The Browser, Reloaded.

Posted by abnu on Monday, February 09, 2004 @ 10:35 PM [ + ]

What's the Big Kahuna? Traditionally, Kahuna was the name of the Hawaiian tribal elder, literally the "Keeper of the Secret" and the link with the spirtual and cultural heritage of the tribe. Since Hawaii became the 50th State of the USA in 1959, kahuna and other words of the indigenous peoples of the Hawaiian Islands have become part of the vernacular and the culture of America. Usage has not always respected the heritage of the native peoples or their modern culture; the current definition of kahuna in Merriam-Webster is politically incorrect - a Hawaiian witchdoctor.

The word kahuna has pretty much been a victim of the clash of cultures and crass commercialism -- from the Hawaiian shirt shops of Big Kahuna and Kool Kahuna to the Big Kahuna's Water and Adventure Park in Florida to The Big Kahuna, an unmemorable movie starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito. In the teen movies of the '60s, such as Beach Blanket Bingo, with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, the Big Kahuna was the best surfer on beach.

Now, a sport utility concept car modeled on the "woody wagons" of the 1960's surfers, the Dodge Kahuna, is making the rounds at car shows. The Honolulu Advertiser reports that this use of the name Kahuna sparked a bit of controversy. Some protesters signed an online petition objecting to the commercial use of the name by DaimlerChrysler.

The Advertiser received an assortment of responses to a story about the petition, most of it supporting the protest. But there were some who found the uproar a little excessive.

"Give me a break!" wrote one reader. "The Hawaiian people have too much going on in their lives, that is serious, to get too wrapped up in such nonsense."

It remains to be seen whether this Internet petition affects in any way the automaker's ultimate choice of name for this vehicle, whenever, if ever the concept goes into production.

Posted by abnu on Thursday, February 05, 2004 @ 9:48 PM [ + ]

Anything Goes: That's the strapline for Gymbox, the London fitness club where, well, anything goes. Ananova reports that the new Shag Workout at Gymbox "involves a three-step process that aims to develop sexual technique, confidence and endurance resulting in a more satisfying session in the sack whilst improving fitness levels."

Later classes include the Motion in the Ocean aerobic workout, which is tailored to work targeted areas of the body in specific ways. This is achieved via a technique called F.A.S.T.E.R (Flexibility, Agility, Stamina, Tone, Endurance and Rhythm), which utilises functional sexual movements.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking,
But now, God knows,
Anything Goes.

Cole Porter- Anything Goes - Premiere: Wednesday, November 21, 1934

Posted by abnu on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 @ 12:14 AM [ + ]

Shards O' Glass Freeze Pops: Satire is alive and well at www.shardsoglass.com, which cleverly parodies big tobacco for creating websites that appear consumer friendly and presenting hazardous products with disclaimers in the public interest. If ever you see something like this on the Internet, don't be fooled: consider your source.

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, February 03, 2004 @ 11:28 AM [ + ]

Monday Morning Quarterback: Another NFL football season has come to an end, and everyone is tittering about Janet Jackson's right breast. The FCC wants to take a closer look, and has launched an investigation. It's not that big a deal, really, but it seems that the media "shock and bra" coverage of Janet's over-exposure is distracting us from the more remarkable Super Bowl moments.

For openers, Houston's own child of destiny, Beyonce, hit all the politically correct notes with her patriotic rendition of the national anthem. Her escort, General Peter Pace, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to give the whole "bombs bursting in air" crescendo even more relevance this year. "That our flag was still there," draped over the shoulders of cowboy Kid Rock at halftime, was just sad. Showing more cleavage than Janet Jackson, deep thinker Jessica Simpson got "choose to party" out of the thoughtful multi-celeb public service piece "Choose to Get Involved. Choose to Vote." Fearing that the Super Bowl audience might actually vote, CBS rejected the election ads of Moveon.org: but the message got out on the Internet and in the press.

Christie Brown, a University of Michigan assistant professor of marketing who was an advertiser before she switched to academia 11 years ago, notes that advocacy groups can use their ads' rejection as an opportunity for guerrilla marketing.

"A cynical person might say they get almost as much mileage from getting rejected as from actually paying the $2 million and going on air," Brown said. "That might actually make it more interesting than if it was tucked between ads for beer and an erectile dysfunction drug."

PETA's sausage didn't get to play in the supergame, either. And, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority was prohibited from running a tourism ad during the Super Bowl broadcast, while the State of Nevada's economy was helped out with a large share of the $81.2 Million bet on the football game.

Here's where you can see all the Super Bowl ads. It's too bad that everyone didn't get to see the Super Bowl ads that aired in Canada. I know, the lament is usually the other way around, and most of the Canadian ads were unremarkable, indeed. One Canadian ad was outstanding. I don't think this ad ran in the USA, but a beer ad for Labatt's Blue Light probably would have been the watercooler chatter, if media reaction to the MTV kiss by Britney and Madonna is any indication. This Blue Light ad features two girls at a bar, one lavishing herself with lip gloss using one of those stick applicators. The other girl says, "I like your lip gloss." "Thanks, want some?" The girls lock lips in a passionate exchange of gloss. Guys just stare in amazement, holding their beers. Now, that's a Super Bowl ad I would have expected to see in the USA Today 16th Annual Ad Meter if it ran in the States.

For Anheuser-Busch, which controls more than half of U.S. beer sales, it was a night to toast -- and toast again. Not only are Budweiser and Bud Light the world's top-selling brews, but they also appear to own Madison Avenue's most effective laugh-generating commercials.

Did the brewing giant lower its taste standards this year?

"We had to talk about (some) spots to make sure we didn't offend anybody or go over the top," says President August Busch IV. "We hope the humor didn't offend anybody."

Not me. What struck me most about this year's Super Bowl extravaganza was that it featured a really good football game. I'm already looking forward to next season.

Posted by abnu on Monday, February 02, 2004 @ 11:48 AM [ + ]

You tell me that it's evolution: Seventy-nine years after the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial," Georgia's School Superintendent, Kathy Cox, is proposing to ban the word "evolution" from the state's school curriculum. Not the teaching of the concept of evolution, mind you, but the speaking of the word evolution, which ought to be described as "biological changes over time" according to the educator.

Cox, who was elected in 2002, last week proposed editing the word "evolution" from the curriculum as part of a massive revision of the state curriculum. She called the term a "buzzword" that poses a risk of derailing teachers' efforts to teach the major concepts of biology.

"By putting the word in there, we thought people would jump to conclusions and think, 'OK, we're going to be teaching the monkeys-to-man sort of thing.' Which is not what happens in a modern biology classroom," Cox said at a news conference Thursday.

Not surprisingly, this neanderthal proposal to ban the word "evolution" is causing an uproar heard 'round the world. Nowhere is the response so well written as by Evan Ferguson in The Observer, today:

Too hard to hate them, and it's hard, too, to loathe a group of people quite so innocent in the ways of the world, so sweetly premodernist, that they can't yet do irony and thus fail, delightfully, to appreciate the rich layers lying behind the fact that the people in this world who are most fervently opposed to the idea of evolution are so often the same ones who will most benefit from it when, one fine day, they grow opposable thumbs.

Such is the denigration of the reputation of the State of Georgia that the Governor seeks to quell the fray with a balanced approach, which makes clear that evolution should be taught in the schools as a theory. Creationism, I suppose, should be spoken of as what in Georgia's schools -- an alternate theory, a religious belief, or a scientific fact?

Posted by abnu on Sunday, February 01, 2004 @ 8:52 AM [ + ]

BLOGROLL