Just to muddy the waters a bit, relative popularity doesn't necessarily correlate with frequency. In 1900, Mary was the most popular girls' name, and nearly 30,000 babies in a million (~3%) were named Mary. Similar story with John. For both sexes, a few very popular names dominated overwhelmingly. These days, the most popular names are given to about 4-6,000 babies per million, and the difference between #1 and #20 in popularity is a fraction of a percent in terms of frequency. Think of it as the Second Law of Baby Name Dynamics: over time, baby names are distributed over a greater and greater range of energy states, thus inexorably increasing baby name entropy.

Also, if you want to discuss this topic, you absolutely have to look at the Baby Name Voyager: http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager. But beware, it's a timesink. You will spend the next few hours looking up your name, the names of all your friends and family, the names of celebrities, and thematically grouped names ("hmm, I wonder about trends in flower names..."), so set aside some time.

Classic. They didn't even read their own article.

As an aside, I always cringe when I see the expression "higher risk of death." I believe the proper demographic/statistical term is "death rate," referring to rate of death within the time frame of the study.

Of course everything is made of chemicals. That doesn't mean that all chemicals are equally nutritious and non-poisonous from the viewpoint of a human diet.

"If somebody posted satire on the Internet, would anybody notice?"

They did just about everything *but* put SATIRE in bold red letters. The very first tip is on the link to the article from the main page: "A shout-out to all of you childless singles out there, from the self-righteous mothers of the world!"

Ironically, as I was reading the piece I was thinking "well, this is amusing, but it's way too overdone and unsubtle to be really good satire."

It's not by any stretch an obscure word. I bet I could find half a dozen books on my children's book shelf that include it. For example "...after a while the consciousness of that baleful scrutiny spoiled even Oliver's enjoyment." That's from chapter five of The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright, which I read when I was about 8 years old. If I had time I'm sure I could find more; I just happened to remember that one.

Why is it so impossible to imagine that a couple could reconcile -- really work things out and reconcile -- and be happy together after a sexual infidelity? I know people who have done it.

My husband and I are monogamous, but one thing that I've learned from my polyamorous friends is that sex is only one part of a marriage, and that a couple's life together depends on fidelity in a much broader sense. Frankly, I can think of a lot of more unforgivable things that one spouse could do to another.

Clearly the parents have read "X: A Fabulous Child's Story," by Lois Gould, first published in Ms. in 1972:

http://www.gendercentre.org.au/22article4.htm

Really. We know all we need to know.

...it's hard for me to understand why people get so obsessed with people "sharing" things that they can, after all, pretty easily ignore. Just like I'm ignoring this Broadsheet post! Um....

Another nice thing about growing herbs is that you can harvest exactly as much as you need when you need it -- instead of buying a big bunch of basil or parsley at the supermarket when you only need a few springs, and having the remainder turn into mush in your vegetable drawer.

Some of us eat pulled pork and salad and yogurt parfait (though probably not all in the same meal).

Years ago I had a friend who had what seemed to be very high expectations of the men she dated, but very low standards. She had a very clear idea of what she wanted (basically, the moon), but she was willing to put up with what seemed to me to be an incredible amount of bullshit and bad, bordering on abusive, behavior once she was in a relationship with someone.

What I took from this is that "choosiness" depends a lot on what point in the relationship you're talking about. And a lot of the research on "choosing" revolves around the first encounter, rather than the longterm.

wysiwyg has it right. I mean, if you buy the results of the study, that means that marriage is good for people. Isn't that what the wingers want to hear?

As for the pseudo-Darwinian bullshit, I really don't know what to say.

The idea of having a party to raise money for rent is pretty old:

http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/harlem/parties.html

Yes, I have a friend who threw a "good-bye" party for her ovaries. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that during the surgery her doctors had discovered a metastasization of the cancer that killed her a couple of years later.

It is, in fact, pretty difficult to portray a vagina on film. After all, an OB/GYN needs to put you in stirrups and use a speculum to get a good look. Or did you mean vulva?

Actually, no. The body is not designed for anything: it evolved. More specifically, the human birth process evolved under selective pressure on several competing trends. It is a compromise among bipedalism, brain size, and point of viability of the infant. Like most evolutionary compromises, it is not perfect.

For some people, the birth process works pretty smoothly, and there's no need for intervention. For others, it doesn't work as well, and intervention is desirable to lessen pain and complications. For some, mother and/or baby will die without intervention. Why is this obvious fact such a stumbling block?