The Computer Wore Menace Shoes

Not pictured: someone named Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell or Walter. But imagine if he had been.

Give your son an unconventional or feminine first name, and you may be condemning him to a life of crime, according to a report by David Kalist and Daniel Lee of Shippensburg University.

Well, it’s not exactly fair to attribute that finding to the report. That finding is actually according to Todayshow.com contributor Michael Inbar. Ah, the “Today” show, hub of things that aren’t really news.

I’m guessing the folks over at “Today” just skimmed Kalist and Lee’s report, what with all the big words, math and all. They were able to pick out the top 10 “bad boy” names and place them in alphebetical order – Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter – which is pretty good considering the show’s track record.

Inbar’s article, however, missed a big assertion in the paper.

“We show that unpopular names are associated with juveniles who live in nontraditional households, such as female-headed households or households without two parents,” Kalist and Lee wrote. “In addition, juvenile delinquents with unpopular names are more likely to reside in counties with lower socioeconomic status.”

Hey, that sounds like an important aspect of the study. It’s probably something that deserved more attention from the article, perhaps even more attention than efforts to think up famous persons who defied their cursed names.

But, in honor of the journalistic standard of ignoring the elephant in the room set before me by “Today,” I’d like to point out that not one person on the FBI’s Most Wanted list – Edward Eugene Harper; Usama Bin Laden; Jason Derek Brown; James J. Bulger; Emigdio Preciado, Jr.; Robert William Fisher; Victor Manuel Gerena; Glen Steward Godwin; Jorge Alberto Lopez-Orozco; or Alexis Flores – has one of the top 10 “bad boy” names.

Hey, that almost made me forget that this study didn’t even come out recently. It was published in the March 2009 issue of Social Sciences Quarterly. Way to be current on your academic research developments, “Today.”

Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kobt discuss the wine koozie on the "Today" show.

Kathie Lee Gifford celebrated a spectacular new invention on the “Today” show: the wine koozie. She and Hoda Kobt marveled at the neoprene sleeve that insulates your wine glass, keeping your preferred inebriant cool. Uh, Kathie, that’s hardly a new idea.

Sleeves of styrofoam large enough to hold a 12-ounce can have been around early 1980s. As technology has advanced, so have koozies. Since their humble beginnings, they have been made of flexible plastic, polyurethane, and, most recently, foam and neoprene, and koozies are now available to fit everything from energy drinks’ slim cans to wine bottles. They can even be personalized. (Alcoholics’ wedding favor, anyone?)

For Gifford, however, these discoveries can’t hold a candle to the cleverly named – hold on to your hats – Woozie! No matter that it probably wasn’t the first – it’s got a better name and design – or the best – dangling strings are just asking to be caught, yanking the glass from an upright position – because it’s got the better name.

Thankfully, being a simple sleeve of insulating material, there wasn’t too much that could be said about the Woozie before the hosts became completely inane talking about it. Right?

“Well, it keeps it cold,” said Kobt of the Woozie’s many wine glass-related functions, “And that’s so it doesn’t sweat. Whatever that means.”

Coincidentally, the product’s name perfectly describes how I feel whenever Gifford and Kobt are on TV.