LegendaryLife Blog

Each year, the United States Social Security Administration (USSSA) releases the top baby names for the previous year, with related statistics based on 4.2 million Social Security Card requests. I use to have a client that had 3 employees with the same name as mine so it was utter confusion when ever anybody wanted to ask a colleague a question… anyways, here are the results for last year!

Top 10 names

For ease, I have stuck a number beside each name to indicate that names position in 2005, I have added the origin and meaning of the name as well just to give you that much more irrelevant data for the day.

Boys

1. Jacob (1 / Hebrew meaning supplanter)
2. Michael (2 / Hebrew meaning who is like God)
3. Joshua (3 / Hebrew meaning Jehovah saves)
4. Ethan (5 / Hebrew meaning strong)
5. Matthew (4 / Hebrew meaning gift from God)
6. Daniel (7 / Hebrew meaning God is my judge)
7. Christopher (9 / Greek meaning Bearer of Christ)
8. Andrew (6 / English meaning Man or Warrior)
9. Anthony (8 / Latin without any special meaning)
10. William (11 / German meaning desire or will)

Girls

1. Emily (1 / German meaning industrious)
2. Emma (2 / Teutonic meaning universal)
3. Madison (3 / English meaning good)
4. Isabella (6 / Hebrew meaning My God is a vow)
5. Ava (9 / Afghan meaning voice)
6. Abigail (4 / Hebrew meaning Father in rejoicing)
7. Olivia (5 / Latin meaning olive)
8. Hannah (7 / Hebrew meaning grace or favor)
9. Sophia (11 / Greek meaning wisdom)
10. Samantha (8 / Aramaic meaning listener)

Interesting Observations

• top 3 names of 2005 happen to be the same as in 2006… In the exact same order!
• Biblical names are still en vogue with parents for guys while for girls, traditional were in
• if you are an Atheist and your name is Daniel, now you know why you where born with an internal conflict of interest
• parents act like Lemmings! Mom spends 9 months with a developing child inside of her and the best name parents can think of is the same as everybody else?

Name and Race

I read a while back in a magazine that a name actually shows a lot to others who have never seen you as to your background. For instance, if you had the name Alberto then many people would assume you are from an Italian ancestry while something like Malik would make others assume you are from an African (American) one. My suggestion is that, rightly or wrongly, your child will be judged based on their first and last name throughout their life… so why not come up with something that would give others either no clue or something spectacular. When I have children, if it’s a guy, it will probably be Matrix, Magnison and/or Excalibur while for gals it would be something like… well, I will let my partner at the time choose. I believe the name should be chosen by the parent who is of the same sex as the child, this way, the child always knows who to blame if they hate their name!

The Bottom Line

Each child is as unique as their fingerprint… please… PLEASE don’t burden them with one of these top 10 2006 names in 2007!

References

http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/baby-names2006-pr.htm

Living a healthy lifestyle is actually easy once you get the habits down pat, so why are people finding it so hard?

International Food Information Council Foundation’s second annual Food & Health Survey Results

Hot off the press, based off interviews of a thousand adults in the United states, the following results stood out:

• Breakfast: although 90% agree to its importance, only 49% actually have one
• Dieting: 56% where trying to loose weight for various reasons while 66% classified themselves of overweight +
• Food Choices: 65% look more towards purported health of a product then price or taste
• Snacks: 93% have at least one a day
• Caffeine: 88% consumption rate
• Awareness of Nutrients Consumption in Diet: Protein (19%), Carbohydrates (26%), Calories (27%), Fat (34%) and Sugar (38%)
• People who have never heard of the following: Fiber (13%), Aspartame (35%), Sucralose (36%) and no clue about anything (3%)
• Physical Activity: 16% are couch potatoes doing none
• Packaging: 65% check the expiration date but only 58% check the ingredients/nutritional information
• 66% of respondents had family members with heart disease while 38% had some with diabetes with cancer being 29%
• Respondents Demographics: 53.4% where married, 26% had at least a University Degree and 76.2% where white

What does this all mean?

Good question, let me try to make sense of these stats in one sarcastic shot. The vast majority of Americans are caffeine addicts who believe the expiration date on the food is more important then its nutritional value. Two thirds consider themselves so fat that half skip breakfast as part of a sensible diet plan to help induce snacking throughout the day, as a result, they they have no clue how much they are actually eating. Sadly, a sixth of Americans have given up on ever leading a healthy lifestyle.

What does this reflect?

I believe that the above results reflect a national need for far more awareness about foods and health in general, this needs to start with kids at the elementary level so they can help educate their parents. Let me repeat this a third time, two thirds of Americans consider themselves overweight… yes… two thirds! What is the excuse given? My guess is they are simply too busy with life to make their own health a priority, without realizing that without health, life really sucks! I find it rather obvious based on this survey that the reason why people find it so hard to find their healthy body comes down to simply education about dietary choices.

Questions I wished they asked

I really hope that in 2008 they ask the following questions to gain further insight into the psyche of Americans:

• Do you participate in a weight training regimen? (if yes, how many times a week)
• What percentage of the meals that you consume in a week home cooked as opposed to take-out?
• How many days in a week do you consume alcohol?
• What is more important to you, perfect health or financial independence?
• If you where a tree…

The Bottom Line

Physical activities must be planned and executed within a framework of regular habits to become part of a healthy lifestyle.

References:

http://www.ific.org/

Before I begin to say anything, review the animated picture in this weeks issue. Does one color scheme make you feel more comfortable? What do you think they represent (does it matter)? Why do you think those colors where chosen? Who is the intended audience? I could easily go on with the questions but let me tell you now that they both represent exactly the same thing. Although I redid the map, I left one with the original color scheme with shades of blue and updated the other with mine with are shades of red. Does giving you this additional information help you at all to figure out what it is showing?

What I am trying to demonstrate this week is something that us visual artists have always known, that the use of color affects your mood, perception and can even modify your beliefs on an issue. The image represents a real and growing problem in the United States, it is based off hard data from the CDC (Centre for Disease Control). This is data that politicians, agencies and companies around the world use to track their interests. How many of you have gotten a pile of papers and at the end was a graphic and just skipped right to it – I know for me I look at pictures first.

So lets recap, both images are showing the same data from a CDC statistical study with the only difference being color. If you had only a few seconds to look at this image, my guess is that if you saw the blue one you would say “hey, we aren’t doing too bad”, if I showed you the red one you would say “holly $#@$, we got to do something”. Isn’t it amazing how much feeling has been generated by a simple picture? What you are looking at is the 2003 data for the growing diabetes epidemic in the USA (and worldwide). What you see in dark blue (or red) are states where over 6% of their population has diabetes. I am sure it’s even higher now then 2 years ago. To put this into perspective, 6% is essentially 1 person with diabetes for every 14 individuals.

Now imagine if this represented a disease or infection such as HIV, Herpes, Malaria, TB or Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) where the population had over 6% infection rate – would you use blue or red?