New Jersey State Assemblyman Craig Stanley is taking issue with the name of the state's National Hockey League team, which has won three Stanley Cup championships.
Assemblyman Stanley (no relation to Lord Stanley) is hellbent to change the name of the New Jersey Devils hockey team before it moves in 2007 from the Meadowlands in East Rutherford to a new facility in Newark, his legislative district.
He wants a new name for the hockey team chosen in a statewide competition. "This is an age where symbolism is very important," said Stanley, a Baptist deacon whose resolution to rename the team is to be introduced in the Assembly next month according to media reports.
The team's mascot is red, cartoonish figure with horns and a goatee.
However, the team's name, chosen in a 1982 fan contest, comes from the mythical Jersey Devil, not the Christian symbol of the antichrist, according to Weird N.J., a travel guide to the state's most offbeat attractions.
The mythical Jersey Devil—with bat-like wings, a forked tail and oversized claws—was said to terrorize Pine Barrens dwellers in the 18th-century after being born the 13th child to poor South Jerseyans and morphing into a dinosaur-like beast.
According to team ownership, there's no chance in hell the team will change its name. New Jersey Devils CEO Lou Lamoriello explained, "It's who we are and what we want to be."
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 @ 1:19 AM
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Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance in the United States of America for those who have died in our nation's service.
In 1868, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land."
The first national celebration of the holiday took place May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day.
Wordlab got a nice link today on Blawg Review #8 where the host lawyer, a former Army officer himself, has some special thoughts and links for Memorial Day.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, May 30, 2005 @ 8:04 AM
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Federal health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drug Viagra, according to press reports. The Food and Drug Administration still is investigating, but has no evidence yet that the drug is to blame, said spokeswoman Susan Cruzan.
The drug's label warns of erections lasting longer than four hours, painful erections lasting longer than six hours, headache, flushed skin and vision problems. It remains to be seen if the FDA will bow to pressure from some pharmacists, who refuse to dispense birth control pills to women, and insist on a label warning men that Viagra is only to be used for procreation and not for masturbation, which is believed to cause blindness.
Posted by
abnu on Friday, May 27, 2005 @ 10:49 AM
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Good news for premature ejaculators and their mates. The US drug approval agency, the FDA, is reviewing an application for dapoxetine hydrochloride, developed by Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, an affiliate of Johnson and Johnson.
The internet is buzzing with the news that this wonder drug, described as the best thing since Viagra, can extend the duration of male sexual performance by three or four times.
Bringing to mind images of the Energizer Bunny getting it on with Paris Hilton, it has been suggested that this new drug might be named Rabbitrol.
Posted by
abnu on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 @ 12:44 PM
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Marquette University reaffirmed its refusal to reinstate the Warriors nickname, though it's having trouble coming up with a widely acceptable replacement.
The administration's recent attempt to rename the university's sports teams the "Marquette Gold" was met with protest demonstrations of students and alumni. Wordlab responded with a parody of this brouhaha, suggesting that Notre Dame's "Fighting Irish" were about to change their name to the "Gold and Blue" in a bold move to achieve political correctness.
Marquette obviously hopes to end-run Notre Dame's claim to this colorful name by putting forward "Blue and Gold" as the #1 name on the ballot in a binding referendum. Marquette University students, alumni, faculty, staff and season ticket holders will begin voting Tuesday in an online survey to select the school’s athletics nickname from this list of nickname choices and descriptions. In addition to the short list of approved names, there's a chance for some other name, except Marauders, to be selected from "write-in" ballots.
To be counted, write-in nicknames must be consistent with the University's Catholic, Jesuit mission and the Board of Trustees' resolution forbidding Native American imagery and references. Additionally, write-in suggestions of nicknames that are intended to embarrass the university will not be counted. Any nicknames under review by the NCAA for their relationship to Native American imagery will not be counted. Examples of nicknames that will not be counted include Warriors (or any variation of the word, i.e., war) and Jumpin' Jesuits.
Christine Hurt, an assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School, is writing in Muskies, which makes sense. Except, the name of the game is not to choose the best name, but to beat Notre Dame at the naming game.
Posted by
abnu on Monday, May 23, 2005 @ 9:15 PM
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Blogging at Wordlab will resume as soon as we get this new autoblogger thing working. In the meantime, please keep reading the old posts with new and improved headings.
Posted by
abnu on Saturday, May 21, 2005 @ 11:58 PM
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug by GlaxoSmithKline for the treatment of restless leg syndrome (RLS). The drug, Requip, was first approved in 1997 for Parkinson's disease.
Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a common neurological disorder characterized by unpleasant sensations of the legs and an urge to move them for relief. Individuals affected with the disorder describe the sensations as pulling, drawing, crawling, wormy, boring, tingling, pins and needles, prickly, and sometimes painful sensations that are usually accompanied by an overwhelming urge to move the legs. Movement provides temporary relief from the discomfort.
Irish Americans are on the warpath over the derogatory characterization of their native people by that insensitive Catholic university with the French name. Nobody seems to know for sure who was the politically incorrect hooligan that first used the name Fighting Irish to describe the athletes of Notre Dame.
The most generally accepted explanation is that the press coined the nickname as a characterization of Notre Dame athletic teams, their never-say-die fighting spirit and the Irish qualities of grit, determination and tenacity. The term likely began as an abusive expression tauntingly directed toward the athletes from the small, private, Catholic institution. Notre Dame alumnus Francis Wallace popularized it in his New York Daily News columns in the 1920s.
The Notre Dame Scholastic, in a 1929 edition, printed its own version of the story:
"The term 'Fighting Irish' has been applied to Notre Dame teams for years. It first attached itself years ago when the school, comparatively unknown, sent its athletic teams away to play in another city ...At that time the title 'Fighting Irish' held no glory or prestige ...
"The years passed swiftly and the school began to take a place in the sports world ...'Fighting Irish' took on a new meaning. The unknown of a few years past has boldly taken a place among the leaders. The unkind appellation became symbolic of the struggle for supremacy of the field. ...The team [name], while given in irony, has become our heritage. ...So truly does it represent us that we unwilling to part with it ..."
Notre Dame competed under the nickname "Catholics" during the 1800s and became more widely known as the "Ramblers" during the early 1920s in the days of the Four Horsemen.
University president Rev. Matthew Walsh, C.S.C., officially adopted "Fighting Irish" as the Notre Dame nickname in 1927.
But times have changed. Henceforth, the athletic teams of Notre Dame should be named for the university's official colors, the Notre Dame Gold & Blue.
To quote the doyen of political correctitude, "The perspective of time has shown us that our actions, intended or not, can offend others. We must not knowingly act in a way that others will believe, based on their experience, to be an attack on their dignity as fellow human beings."
It won't be easy for the administration at Notre Dame to explain the new name to the student body, which will surely be the laughingstock of college sports. But it seems to be the only way to go, now that a lesser-known Catholic university, with an equally French name, recently took the politically expedient high road and refused alumni requests to restore the honor of their traditional team name, the Marquette Warriors, choosing instead to be known simply as the Marquette Gold.
Update 05/08/05: "This is not something that is going to just blow over," says one alum who's really upset about the Name Change at Marquette.
Update 07/25/05: After a plebiscite at Marquette University, the team name reverted from Gold to Golden Eagles, but dye hard Warriors seem conflicted.
Posted by
abnu on Friday, May 06, 2005 @ 12:00 AM
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A while ago, a post here made a sweeping generalization about the branding of law firms. The point of that post was that branding is not about advertising legal services, but about the law firm approaching its clients in a way that engenders trust. This was key:
The post contained a grain of salt, and maybe I rubbed it in a bit. Some lawyers pointed out that not all lawyers are clueless when it comes to branding. For sure—I was generalizing to make the point. I'd be the first to recognize that there are a few amazing firms, amazing practices, when it comes to law firm branding.
Case in point: the law firm of ShuffieldLowman, in Orlando, Florida.
Ice cream may not be the first thing most people associate with a law firm. But that's the image the marketing team at ShuffieldLowman pitched for the Orlando firm's first ad campaign.
The print ad consisted of five single-scoop ice cream cones in a row followed by a triple-scoop cone and the words: "Expect more from your law firm."
No courthouse pillars. No scales of justice. No stern-faced partners in suits standing in front of bookshelves filled with law volumes.
ShuffieldLowman's marketing director, Mellanie Bartlett, wanted an ad that would communicate the 18-month-old firm's core values while illustrating its personal approach to the practice of law.
The firm's lawyers and staff bought it. But The Florida Bar did not -- at least not at first. Still, the firm persisted and, in what amounted to a long-shot attempt to save the ad, got the Bar to overturn its rejection on appeal.
"This ad is very creative, and that's very unusual in lawyer advertising," said Charles "Skip" Sells, one of the firm's commercial litigators. "The advertisement uses humor to point out that not all firms are the same and prospective clients could or should expect more from any and every attorney relationship."
As remarkable as the advertisement is, from a branding perspective, it's just stunning that The Florida Bar's ethics counsel, which must approve every ad by every lawyer in the state, completely missed the point. Lawyers who do understand branding are going to have to lead their profession by example, and it's not always going to be easy.
Posted by
abnu on Thursday, May 05, 2005 @ 12:06 AM
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A word, phrase or sentence that makes sense when reversed, but is not the same as the original is called a semordnilap.
A string of letters that reads the same backwards as forwards is a palindrome (“Madam, I’m Adam”; “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!”; “Was it a car or a cat I saw?”). A semordnilap is closely related, but the reversed text must be different. For example, if you reverse “diaper” you get “repaid”, and if you invert “desserts” the word “stressed” appears.
Breaking news: USA Today reports that a man found a finger in his frozen custard.
A more complicated example is “deliver no evil”, but you can probably invent better ones for yourself. As semordnilap is palindromes written backwards, it’s a self-referential word, one that encapsulates within itself the thing it represents. You could hardly say that it’s common, but many earnest palindromists have accidentally discovered it, and it has some small circulation among word wizards.
A person who gets what he deserves is said to have gotten his just deserts with one "s" and not his just desserts, which, if used in an epicurious context, might be a pun rather than an error.
Posted by
abnu on Wednesday, May 04, 2005 @ 12:29 AM
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On Blawg Review, a "blawg" being a law blog, there's a review of a cleverly named blog, Hoosier Daddy, by an Indianapolis lawyer whose more lawyerly blawg is titled Hoosier Lawyer.
In colonial America, the terms cracker and hoosier were widely used to refer to white farmers who did not own slaves or large plantations. Because the best agricultural land, the flat land near the rivers and seacoast, was generally used for growing cash crops in large plantations, small farms--usually in the hills and mountains--were identified with subsistence farming, and these farmers were poor and usually uneducated. Therefore, these terms had a derogatory connotation. Linguistic maps of the southern states indicate that cracker was used more often in the coastal areas of Virginia and North Carolina and in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Hoosier was predominant in the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina(1).
The southern half of Indiana, along the Ohio River, was settled first, along with Kentucky and Tennessee, and the earliest settlers came largely from the Appalachian region--Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. By the early 1800s "hoosier" was widely used in Indiana to refer to poor farmers or ignorant, rustic people in general.
The first newspaper usage of "hoosier" to refer to people from Indiana in general was in 1832. As sometimes happens, a nickname that originally had a negative connotation was adopted and used with pride by the bearers of the name. By the time of the American Civil War (1861-1865), this nickname was firmly established. During the war, men from all parts of the United States came into close contact and relied on these nicknames to identify each other. Some examples: Indiana = Hoosiers, Maine = Foxes, Delaware = Muskrats, Ohio = Buckeyes, Wisconsin = Badgers, Iowa = Hawkeyes, New York = Knickerbockers.
So, there ya have it, cracker!
Posted by
abnu on Tuesday, May 03, 2005 @ 12:12 PM
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Image is everything. So, it's good to have a big-sounding name like Massive Corporation. But prospective clients aren't going to be fooled if your people don't look the part.
The entire Massive Corporation staff is assembled of business consultants, many of whom also do professional modeling for stock photograpy CD collections, such as Executive People, and Corporate People. In certain cases on this website, we have altered their appearances for increased visual impact.
The tenth edition is kind of special because it's #10, so this week's post is ganked From On High.
There's something I've been meaning to complain about for a while now. I'm not even sure what to call it, but, to quote a legal mind greater than my own, "I know it when I see it." The thing I'm talking about is the phenomenon of naming ordinary and unsophisticated things - usually buildings, institutions, and places - in a way that makes them sound extaordinary and unecessarily pretentious.
The most common manifestation of this the "at" syndrome. You've probably seen it in your very own state or community. It involves taking a name and adding to it the word "at", followed by a geographic location. So, for example, one would take the name"The Short Hills Mall" and turn it into "The Mall at Short Hills". This convention also quite commonly shows up in the names of housing developments and gated communities (I'd be willing to guess there is a swanky development known as something like "Lakeview at Boca Raton"). Why people feel that separating a place's name from its geographic location with an awkward sounding preposition connotes class or sophistication, I don't quite get. After all, don't pretentious types usually look down on those who say things like "where's the mall at" or "isn't that place at New Haven?"
Another strain of this faux fancy naming tendency is the "the" syndrome. This phenomenon shows up more frequently in the context of schools. So, for instance, chances are if you went to a public high school, it was called something along the lines of "Madison High School". If you went to a private school, however, the chances of the name being preceded by a superfluous "the" drastically increase. In that case, you probably went to "The Lawrenceville School" or "The Peck School", etc. etc. Personally speaking, I thought until I arrived at law school that I was going to Yale Law School. I was rudely awakened however, when I was reminded again and again by our illustrious dean that I was a proud student of THE Yale Law School.
The fact that people need to engage in this kind of superfluous "at"age and "the"ing has always irked me. It's a similar pet peeve to my disdain of over-using Old English/fake Old English spellings like "Towne Centre" and "Shoppes". I realize more and more, however, that these linguistic conventions are largely unavoidable, especially in the peer-set that I'm likely to find myself in once I graduate. So, I suppose it's about time I cave in and get used to the fancified names that so many seem intent on propagating. From now on, if people ask, I go to the Law School at Yale.
[Full disclosure: Abnu didn't go to Yale.]
Posted by
abnu on Sunday, May 01, 2005 @ 9:02 AM
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The term likely began as an abusive expression tauntingly directed toward the athletes from the small, private, Catholic institution. Notre Dame alumnus Francis Wallace popularized it in his New York Daily News columns in the 1920s.
