BlogSat

...Sweet! A great link on the Freakonomics blog from Prof. Levitt. Its about how the Dean at the Wisconsin Business School is getting fairly sizable contributions from donors to not name the building and eventually other rooms, plaques and even urinals in the building. I think its pretty cool counter-programming. Any institution (especially schools) need to find ways to drum up contributions and slapping people's names on different things has been an effective way to do it. Tapping into the opposition that many people feel towards this is a good idea... When I was in B-School, we poked fun at the practice a little bit by slapping our names on random stuff . My name is on a section of the mailfolders.:)

Ok. I found something to rant about again.:) I'd thought about this when I read this TechDirt article as few weeks ago. Someone sued Google and Yahoo, because he claimed the names were based on Tanzanian tribe names....and somehow this was evil. The suit is a frivolous one, but as the article points out there are tons of startups whose names are essentially just Swahili words. Now, this would annoy me about any language. but the overuse of a language that I could once speak (I'm told that till age 5 it was the language I was most comfortable with) seems particularly egregious. The practice may have been interesting the first time, even the second, sometimes it can be still be witty and original...but at some point its just being unoriginal. I'm willing to bet that most people in these startups don't have a Tanzanian/East African connection of any sort, so its just one way to find a name that seems "cool"....either to them or an expensive naming consultant....