Baby Name Wizard’s NameVoyager takes forever to load and requires a load of java script, but the result is worth the wait: You type in a name and a graph of that name’s popularity over the last century grows right before your eyes. It’s amazing.

You can track all sorts of cultural trends. For instance, watch “Colin” spike following the Gulf War and look at the two spikes for “Roosevelt,” along with their steep declines. “Elvis,” too, is brought back form the dead in the 1930s, and then explodes in popularity as the King’s career takes off.

This website (which is based on a book by Laura Wattenberg) is worth an entire chapter in David Brooks’s next book.

And if you’re not careful, it can suck up your entire day.

You know what they say: Hate the playa, love the game.

But why would you even hate on R-Dog? He’s bovs.

Headline: Webber deal may not be a steal after all. Gee, you think?

Duncan Currie has a great piece with three ideas to save the NHL and now there’s a story saying that a group of investors is offering to buy the entire league for $3.3 billion.

RatherBiased has a transcript of Dan Rather’s appearance on Letterman last night. As you might have guessed, the central point Rather makes is:

[The Thornburgh-Boccardi panel] concluded that whatever happened and whatever you thought about it, it was not motivated by political bias and they said that, although they had four months and millions of dollars, they could not demonstrate the documents were not authentic, that they were forgeries. They said they couldn’t make that conclusion.

As I’ve said from the beginning, five years from now this will be the one-sentence summary of the CBS News scandal. Thornburgh and Boccardi performed a whitewash for CBS.

In other Rather news, Ken Auletta’s New Yorker profile is out (but not online) and it’s a Fergusonian masterpiece. It is such fine work that you can’t tell if it’s a hit or a puff. That’s great writing. Some of the highlights:

* “A Royal typewriter dominates his desk, though he never uses it. It is there, he said, because ‘it reminds me of what I aspire to be–I want to be a great reporter.'”

* “A meteorological sign for hurricanes is woven into the left forearm of many of Rather’s shirts; Rather got his start at CBS after covering Hurricane Carla, in September of 1961.”

In one fabulous passage, Rather brings Auletta to the Evening News “fishbowl” early in the morning and tries to appear as though he’s involved in the nitty-gritty of production (something Auletta tells us isn’t actually true). The phone in the room keeps ringing and Rather keeps lunging for it, answering it with “Rather” and “Evening News. Rather.” The CBS correspondents on the other end of the line reply with a surprised, Who’s this?

The portrait Auletta paints of Rather is not completely unsympathetic, but it is one of amazing, sky-scraping vanity. It is a vanity so complete and all-consuming that Rather believes his own schtick with an earnestness that is, at times, even a little winning.

If nothing else, Auletta’s article deepened my appreciation for Michael Mann’s The Insider. Christopher Plummer’s performance as Mike Wallace looked good on the screen. But you can only grasp its true brilliance by seeing what these TV people are like in real life.

Check out this article, from the Smith Sophian, titled Smith Alums Marry, Start a Family:

Alexa Fletcher ’02 candidly expressed her reason for choosing Smith College.

“It had always been my dream to find a wife at Smith and start a family,” she said.

Lena Fletcher ’99, her wife of about a year, did not share this sentiment. While at Smith, she had played rugby, and at the time they met, had no intention of settling down anytime soon. But as luck would have it, in Alexa’s first semester at Smith, she decided to go to a rugby party. Lena, who had just begun her senior year, was a little hesitant about the relationship at first.

“One of the first things I had heard about her through the rumor mill was, of course, her dream of finding a wife,” Lena said. “When I heard that, I thought that she wasn’t for me. And it turned out she was.” . . .

The kicker is an ubelievable bit of self-parody:

In terms of the legality of their marriage outside of Massachusetts, they added that they avoid leaving Massachusetts together. Even though they say they could not be happier, Lena sometimes wonders if it had not been for Massachusetts taking that first step toward legalizing gay marriage, then maybe gay marriage would not have been such a hot topic during the 2004 presidential race–and perhaps President Bush would not have been re-elected.

I mean, that’s how the piece ends. I would say more, but I don’t want to offend David Skinner by accident. You know how he is.

Who needs external critics when I’ve got David Skinner right here at Galley Slaves?

Am I “cheering on” “a scene of depravity and sexual abuse”? I’m afraid not. I was echoing the swinging Austen Powers in reference to the Boston Herald‘s description of what sounded like Caligula, 02210.

Now, if only I had worked Richard Cohen into that post, then Dave would have really had something to write about . . .

I have it on good authority that the other four Galley Slaves readers have not taken the blog reader survey yet. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that it takes 8 data points to achieve true statistical significance. Duh.

So, will you please go click on the survey, pony up your personal information, note Galley Slaves as your referring blog on Question 16, and then leave your mother’s maiden name in the comments section below? Thanks.