Stars of the Week: 6/22

Lifehacker:Cheat Sheet for Power Naps
Because I'm all about the naps. Anything that helps facilitate the napping process is awesome.

Lifehacker:RepairPal Finds You an Honest Mechanic
If only there was something like this for dating.

Engadget Mobile:T-Mobile's Samsung t229 launches, looks at us funny
Someone, somewhere is saying: "I've made a huge mistake."
At least they should be. This is terrible.

What's In a Name?

While cleaning out my drafts of unpublished posts, I discovered I actually wrote quite a bit for this one but just never finished it. Thus why the article is dated 1/1/2008.

I often wonder if the people who grow up with those weird (sorry, unique) names end up hating their parents with every fiber of their being for saddling them with such terrible names. Some parents are misguided and think every kid wants to stand out from the rest of their peers. Some parents are pushed into passing along a family name that should have died out generations ago. Some parents indulged in too many psychotropic drugs in their earlier stages of life.

Now, CNN illustrates some of the parents who realized the error in their ways and changed their child's name. While none of the couples in this story had given particularly odd-ball names to their children, perhaps this will be a lesson to those mothers who think the name they choose while heavily anesthetized will have staying power.

Some names however aren't too odd or uncommon, but just really horrible names. For example:

Bertha: Do you want your child to grow up to be overweight and featured on Cops or Jerry Springer (or both)?

Gertrude: What an excellent name! For a grandmother of 12 who smokes 2 packs a day. For a newborn? Not so excellent

Hunter: You might as well petition L.L. Bean for a lifetime supply of plaid overshirts

Demon: Yes, a real name I have seen. Why would you continue to go by this name?

Many more exist and have been previously mocked here, here, and here.

Rogue Baseball Bat Injuries Boy

Frivolous lawsuits are nothing new but the Domalewski family has taken things to a new level.

Young Steven Domalewski was pitching in a Little League game when an opposing player hit a ball into Steven's chest to cause his heart to stop. This subsequently led to brain damage and physical disabilities for the teen.

The Domalewskis is now suing the maker of the baseball bat used at the time, Little League Baseball, and the sporting goods store where the bat was purchased for the incident claiming the metal baseball bat that was used is too dangerous for the youth to hit flying baseballs with.

While it can be seen that this is a terrible accident that will have a lasting effect on the entire family, it is also clear that this is a very stupid lawsuit for the express purpose of extorting money from parties not at fault.

Surprisingly, the child who was responsible for striking the baseball, the manufacturer of the baseball, the laws of physics (specifically regarding motion and force), and God himself were spared from litigation.

Fox News: Parents to Sue Maker of Metal Baseball Bats Over Son's Injury

The Real Reason You Have Crappy Coverage on Your Cell Phone

The next time you are trying to place a call on your cell phone and it does not go through, instead of blaming your wireless provider, consider some alternative causes to your problem.

Your coverage could be affected by many outside factors including your proximity to the nearest tower, usage patterns by those also in your area, materials and architecture type of the building you may be in, or some a-hole who pilfers materials and subsequently jacks up the cell tower.

NBC12: Copper stolen from cell tower in Chesterfield

When Music is Bad for You

At first glance at the headline, I thought this Scientific American article had to do with the hordes of terrible alternative rock and hip-hop songs that make you long for a seizure to escape the damaging mental effects of shitty music. As it turns out, for Stacey Gayle, music was actually causing her to have seizures. While a rare condition which would certainly make having a normal life difficult, I hope that someone afflicted with this condition, musicogenic epilepsy, would be brave enough to go to a shitty concert, have a seizure, and subsequently sue the group out of existence.

This may be a very effective way to reduce the number of terrible bands clogging the airwaves.

Scientific American: When Your Favorite Song Gives You Seizures