In this in-depth piece at The Coral Project, writer J. Nathan Matias looks at the controversy surrounding the use of real names online. “People often say that online behavior would improve if every comment system forced people to use their real names. It sounds like it should be true – surely nobody would say mean things if they faced consequences for their actions? Yet the balance of experimental evidence over the past thirty years suggests that this is not the case. Not only would removing anonymity fail to consistently improve online community behavior – forcing real names in online communities could also increase discrimination and worsen harassment.” Read on to learn more about anonymity, harassment, and how names play into the dynamic.

The University of Melbourne’s Richard Berry building has been renamed to the Peter Hall building in an effort to create a more inclusive campus environment. The move comes after a long anti-racism campaign by a group of staff and students. Berry lobbied for “sterilization, segregation and the lethal chamber” for Aboriginal people, as well as homosexuals, poor people, and prostitutes.

The building has been the home of mathematics and statistics for several decades and was the building in which Professor Hall produced much of his highly influential work in non-parametric statistics. Professor Hall was regarded as a giant in his field for his many outstanding and innovative contributions to statistics and probability theory. His work included a number of classic monographs in addition to over 500 research papers.

“The Berry Building was renamed in response to the death in 2016 of Peter Hall, a prolific and world-renowned mathematician and statistician,” said spokesman David Scott in a statement to the BBC. “While the building had previously housed the Department of Anatomy, it has been home to the School of Mathematics and Statistics for a number of years, the School where Professor Hall completed his internationally-recognized work. Therefore it was appropriate to name the building to reflect its current usage.”

Twisters, cyclones, hurricanes, and tropical storms.  For nearly one hundred years now, the National Hurricane Center has had the task of bestowing these spectacular weather events with personal names.  To learn which names have been scheduled through 2022, visit the special “About Names” page at the NHC.

Since 1953, Atlantic tropical storms had been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center. They are now maintained and updated through a strict procedure by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization.

The six lists are used in rotation and re-cycled every six years, i.e., the 2017 list will be used again in 2023. The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity. If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO committee (called primarily to discuss many other issues) the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it. Several names have been retired since the lists were created. Here is more information the history of naming tropical cyclones and retired names.

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photo credit:INGIMAGE

The most popular baby name in Israel in 2015 was Muhammad, given to some 2,730 newborn boys, according to a report released by the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel. And for the second year in a row, the most popular Jewish name for a boy was Noam, with some 1,414 boys given this name, while the most popular Jewish name for a girl was Noa, which has remained one of the most popular names for a girl for the past 16 years. Keep reading this article in the Jerusalem Post to find out more about 2015’s most popular names!

YVONNE COLBERT/CBC

Lorne Grabher, a Canadian resident of Nova Scotia, has a personalized license place with his surname on it. He says the plate, which he has had for decades, was suddenly refused when it came up for renewal this year. Nova Scotia’s license plate regulations allow the province to refuse names deemed to be offensive or in poor taste. The province currently bans about 3,100 names. What do you think about the decision? And what would you do if your name was banned from a license plate?

Here is an exercise: Think of a piece of music that you love or hate.  Got it?  Can you hear that wonderful (or annoying) rhythm in your head?  But here is the million dollar question — Were you able to recall that tune without remembering the title of that music?  If you were (or even if you weren’t), there may be a very good reason why and it has very little to do with the number of records sold and everything to do with brain physiology.  Interested in learning more?  Read what researchers have recently discovered about the connection between music and naming in this article at Scientific American. They conducted a scientific study to find out which parts of the brain are important for naming a famous song.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is an internationally recognized leader in the international fight against deadly diseases. What few people know, however, is that the WHO is also involved in the bestowing names to illnesses. As any scientist can tell you, naming a disease is no easy task. The moniker chosen must not only be unique, descriptive, and accurate. Ideally, it will also avoid causing any unnecessary offense to people, places, and animals. To help the disease name-givers in their task, the WHO has a whole set of official guidelines for the naming of newly discovered human infectious diseases, as reported in Science magazine. However, not everyone is pleased about the rules and recommendations.

Among the existing monikers that its new guidelines “for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases” would discourage: Ebola, swine flu, Rift Valley Fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and monkey pox. Instead, WHO says researchers, health officials, and journalists should use more neutral, generic terms, such as severe respiratory disease or novel neurologic syndrome.

While the controversy continues in Washington, D.C., the state of California has introduced a new law (AB-30) prohibiting all public schools from using the name “redskins” for sports teams and mascots. American Indians regard the term as offensive. Calaveras High School, in Calaveras County, chose to drop the name it used for decades and decided that it would no longer have a mascot at all.

The new law is called the “California Racial Mascots Act“.  To read the exact text of this landmark piece of legislation, click through to the California Legislative Information website.