• OF COURSE HER NAME IS ‘BETTY BROWN’: “The Texas Democratic Party demanded an apology Wednesday from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell for suggesting Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are ‘easier for Americans to deal with.’” Soon everybody in Terrell will have comically implausible names like “Sara Smith.” [Houston Chronicle]

When historians look back on the collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and 2009, they will find a single culprit. It won’t be the completely asymmetric system of risk and reward that compensated executives and traders handsomely regardless of whether they made or lost billions, nor will it be a 30-year trend in widening inequality between the investment class and people who make money the old-fashioned way (by “working”), nor will it be the demise of the manufacturing sector to the benefit of the financial services sector until we became a nation of bankers selling worthless shit to each other for increasingly laughable amounts of money. No, the dastardly poison in the American heart was one very simple thing: the names of these criminal companies that lost all of our dollars. And once we change their names, the entire system will heal itself. MORE »

Macedonia wants to join NATO, but it can’t unless it changes its name. You see, existing NATO member Greece also has a province called “Macedonia,” and it doesn’t want anyone to get confused. Last month a U.N. special negotiator put forward a list of five names that Macedonia might want to consider, but the country turned up its nose in horrified disgust. What were these terrible alternate names? MORE »