Naming names
A little while back, Victor Steinbok wrote me with a link to the
NNDB page of
nicknames granted by George W. Bush -- "Ali" for Barbara Boxer,
"Camarones" for Paul Cameron, "Corndog" for John Cornyn, and so
on. (You probably already know about "Turd Blossom" for Karl
Rove.) The main effect of the page is to depict POTUS as an aging
adolescent, and that has some entertainment value, though you shouldn't
let that image cause you to misunderestimate the man.
The NNDB site is an odd assortment of biographical information about
roughly 15,000 people, from all over the world, both dead and alive,
focusing on celebrity (even rather modest celebrity) and notoriety, and
promising links between entries. (Compare this with the roughly
100,000 entries in
Who's Who in
America: only in America, only living people, focusing on
accomplishment, and linkless.) Stanford psychology professor Phil
Zimbardo gets in, probably because of the famous "prison
experiment". Joey Buttafuoco is in there, classified
straightforwardly as a "criminal". "
Girls Gone Wild mastermind" Joe
Francis (aka Joseph Francis) also gets in, with his occupation down as
"business" and a five-item rap sheet (child pornography, drug
trafficking, obscenity, racketeering, and rape). A fair number of
pornstars get in: at least one, Jeff Stryker, from the biggies of gay
porn, and the Lindas include not only Blair, Ronstadt, Hamilton,
Evangelista, Lavin, Evans, Lingle, Chavez, McCartney, Fiorentino, Gray,
Tripp, Cardellini, Hunt, and Perry (notice the preponderance of actors
and entertainers), but also Lovelace.
You will probably be pleased, then, to hear that not one of the
Language Log bloggers is (yet) in the NDDB. Yes, I checked,
starting with myself, of course. That's how I came across Phil
Zimbardo, a companion in the Land of Zs.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at October 11, 2005 08:45 PM