Picking a name for a new baby is not as easy as it might seem. Sure, some people have it easy -- their first born son is always named Humphrey or daughters' names always start with M -- and some people have the name picked out even before they hit puberty. But for the rest of us, it can be a nerve-wracking, marriage-wrecking experience.

My wife gave birth last Monday afternoon to a baby boy (9 pounds, 4 ounces; 20.25 inches) and we still didn't have a name for him. I was supposed to pick the name, but none of the ones I picked -- River, Tuolumne, Alder -- passed the mother-in-law test. (If she didn't like the name, she wasn't going to take care of it.) Even my son changed his recommendation from Firebaby to William Shakespeare Sinasohn (which has a nice ring to it, but my wife had issues with the name William.)

Girl's names are actually easier, I think -- had he been a girl, this one would have been named Tenaya. Finding the right boy's name, though, was a real challenge. I wanted something unusual and representative of my love for nature and the Sierras in particular (my first son was supposed to be named Redwood, but that got over-ruled too.) My rule of thumb is that if you can think of a famous person or more than one non-famous person with the name, then it was out (unless the famous person was someone really cool.)

So I spent a lot of time on-line looking for the right name, and I thought others might be interested in the resources I used.

Marci Milfs was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! She went into an Urban Outfitters clothing store in Northwestern Washington State to buy some hip, trendy clothing for her teenage son when she spotted some books on a table in the store. In addition to such subversive works as Stephen Colbert's "I Am America (And So Can You)", she found a book entitled "Porn for Women" which featured pictures of -- gasp! -- men doing housework.

Apparently, the store also carried "Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults" which is wholly unsuitable for teenaged pieces of paper. "When I saw it, I was shocked," Milfs said. The books were apparently right there in plain sight where anyone -- teenagers included -- could see them. She is planning to file a complaint with the city and has already contacted her state representative.

Urban Outfitters, for their part, wants to be "the brand of choice for well-educated, urban-minded young adults." They do this by "creating a differential shopping experience, which creates an emotional bond with the 18 to 30 year old target customer we serve." The store's corporate office told Milfs that the books are not sex books but art books.

I can see the art book argument with the Pornogami book, but the Porn for Women book is just plain humour. It features pictures of clothed men doing housework and saying things such as "Ooh, look. The NFL playoffs are today. I bet we'll have no trouble parking at the crafts fair." It seems to me that if that's the raciest thing a college-aged girl sees, she's doing something wrong.

A lot of people in the technology industry consider Microsoft to be pure evil. It turns out that they aren't completely evil after all. The company has partnered with the Companions in Courage Foundation to deliver gaming kiosks to children's hospitals around the country, loaded with an xbox 360 video game system, games, and TV shows and movies.

The kiosks will also let hospitalized kids play games and chat with other kids in other hospitals over a private network. The first batch was installed at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center of Seattle and the Children's Hospital of Orange County in California.

"Entertainment, creativity and personal connections can be important factors in alleviating some of the isolation and discomfort these children experience each day," said Companions in Courage founder and National Hockey League Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine, speaking of kids who are in the hospital for an extended period. "These gaming stations are a perfect complement to the interactive playrooms."

The mission of Companions in Courage is to build interactive playrooms in hospitals throughout North America. "It's extremely gratifying to witness the joy and excitement of these children and teens when they have a chance to break away from the normal hospital routine, and make new friends while playing video games," said Cynthia Sparer, executive director of Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian.

For once, I have to say -- and this pains me to no end -- good job Microsoft!

My son Jared, like a lot of kids, is totally into trains. We've been to the California and Nevada state train museums in Sacramento and Carson City and have plans to visit a lot more of the rail-related attractions in Northern California. If you're anywhere near the four big train stations in the US, you might want to check out the events planned for National Train Day, this Saturday, May 10th.

There are going to be concerts, exhibits, and giveaways at Washington, DC's Union Station, New York City's Penn Station, Chicago's Union Station and Los Angeles' Union Station. The Harlem Globetrotters will perform in New York and Sara Bareilles in Washington D.C. Even if you're not near one of those stations, the official website has info to put together your own event.

The celebration takes place on the 139th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory Point, Utah. It also serves to promote the recent success of Amtrak -- ridership grew by a million and a half to more than 25 million riders in 2007. Even if you're not near one of the big celebrations, it seems to me that this Saturday would be a good day to visit a railroad museum or take a ride on a train.

In a move reminiscent of the Hitler-Jugend, planning is underway for the Delaware Academy for Public Safety and Security, a charter high school in Wilmington that will take as many as six hundred inner-city youths and train them to become part of the Homeland Security forces and take part in the war-on-whatever.

Students will be called cadets, will wear uniforms, and will follow courses of study in special weapons and tactics, prison guarding, and professional demolition, among others. The languages taught in the school will include Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. Physical training will be a big part, with daily after-school exercise programs already planned.

Spearheading the project is attorney, former Marine hand to hand combat expert, and Olympic Judo coach Thomas Little. Little also spent more than a decade on the African continent training urban youth. Maybe this will turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread, but I'm not convinced. It just seems a little too familiar.

Parents of college-bound children, beware! Boys and girls, your innocent little babies, perhaps, are co-habitating in a single dorm room, with school approval! Even well-known, respectable schools such as Brown University, Oberlin College, and the California Institute of Technology are permitting this heinous situation. Next year, Stanford University will join in the debauchery and allow it.

Sure, students say that nothing goes on and that they don't even watch each other getting dressed, but -- come on! -- these are college kids! Their hormones are raging! The fires of lust are burning inside them and there they are, dropped into those dens of iniquity known as colleges and you're going to tell me that there's no hanky-panky going on? Puh-lease!

Well, actually, according to those involved, it isn't about sex; it's about friends rooming together even though they happen to be of differing genders. "People are shocked to hear that it's happening and even that it's possible," said twenty-year-old Erik Youngdahl, a sophomore at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. But "once you actually live in it, it doesn't actually turn into a big deal." Youngdahl shares a room with friend and fellow Russian studies student Michelle Garcia.

"It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you," said Jeffrey Chang, founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that promotes gender-neutral housing. "Students aren't doing this to make a point. They're not doing this to upset their parents. It's really for practical reasons."

In all honesty, it wouldn't bother me and I do think that men and women (and, despite the fact that they seem like kids to me, we really are talking about young men and women) can share a room without there being anything more to it than that.

Our plan for the birth of kid number three is to go to the hospital, then have the baby. It seems they do things differently down in Southern California. Seventeen-year-old Xochitl Parra was getting ready for school at 5:30 in the morning last Wednesday; alone and in the shower, she felt the contractions start. "I felt his head coming, so I sit down and pushed so he could come out," she said.

Her phone was disconnected and it was too early to bother the neighbors, so instead of calling for an ambulance, she got dressed and walked eight blocks to the hospital, carrying her newborn son, still attached by his umbilical cord. "She still had the placenta and the baby was still attached, so of course everyone said, 'Don't move!'" said Dr. Jose Perez, director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Despite the odd circumstances of the baby's birth and the subsequent trek to the hospital, the 8 pound, 3 ounce baby boy named Alejandro is normal and doing fine. Parra hadn't told anyone about being pregnant because she was worried about her mother's response. She is a sophomore in high school and didn't want to get kicked out of the house. Since the birth, however, her mother has come to accept the situation and will help take care of the baby so her daughter can continue her schooling.

Even though Parra -- still a kid herself -- seems like she's not really prepared to have a kid of her own, it also appears that this is going to work out okay. "We hear so much negative with teenagers throwing their babies in the Dumpsters," said Perez. "This baby is fine, and hopefully there will be a happy ending with the extended family." Good luck to Parra and to little Alejandro!

So, the children of Iran don't get to play with Barbie dolls because they undermine their Muslim culture. American kids, meanwhile, are apparently eschewing the dolls because of the environmentally unfriendly packaging. There's probably not much Mattel can do about the former, but they're turning the latter into a profit center.

Barbie BCause is a new line of "eco-friendly accessories for girls." And what exactly makes it so eco-friendly? The product line "repurposes excess fabric and trimmings from other Barbie® doll fashions and products which would otherwise be discarded, offering eco-conscious girls a way to make an environmentally-friendly fashion statement with cool, patchwork-style accessories."

Barbie dolls come packaged in a huge amount of plastic packaging; I'm not sure that making some bags out of leftover fabric makes up for that. Certainly, from a business point of view, it makes sense -- why waste all that perfectly decent fabric when you can sell it and rack up some Brownie points for being "green" at the same time? From an environmental point of view, I think that picking up an equivalent product at the local thrift shop makes more sense. While I'm no expert on women's fashion accessories, I have to say I don't find the pictured items very attractive. What do you think?

via Eco Child's Play

A year ago, Lori Coble was sitting in traffic on Interstate 5 in Southern California when a big rig rear-ended her minivan at an estimated 55-60 mph. Lori and her mother were injured, but her three children, five-year-old Kyle, four-year-old Emma, and Katie, just two years old, were killed in the horrific crash. Like the Phoenix of legend, the Coble family has risen from the ashes of tragedy to be reborn.

In an amazing coincidence, Lori Coble has just given birth to triplets, two girls and a boy. Of course, Ashley, Ellie and Jake, all born about a minute apart, are not a replacement for Kyle, Emma, and Katie, but it is interesting that the three triplets are two girls and one boy, just as the their first three children were.

"It's kind of a two-sided coin," said Chris Coble, when he found out his wife was pregnant with triplets last October. "We feel amazed that it's happening, but at the same time we're still mourning Kyle, Emma and Katie. Nothing will ever replace them. We feel joy for what's happening, but we're crying and missing the kids."

I'm sure nothing will ever replace the three children they lost a year ago, but hopefully the couple will find renewed happiness in their three new bundles of joy.

A Florida television station, in an attempt to help raise awareness of missing children, performed an experiment at a local shopping mall. The station posted signs with a picture of a missing girl by the entrance to the mall and then had the girl -- actually a paid model -- sit on a bench, by herself, just inside.

Shoppers repeatedly entered the mall without noticing the signs and even those who did, for the most part, did not notice or stop to help the supposedly missing girl. Of those who did match the girl to the posters, some were worried about getting involved. "That's what I was thinking," said one shopper. "I was scared the mom would pop out of nowhere and be like, 'Why are you talking to my child?'"

All told, only two actually stopped to talk to the girl and make sure she was okay. Two others saw the posters and the girl and asked the manager of a nearby store to call security. In some ways, the results of the experiment are both good and bad. "On one hand," said the girl's real father, watching nearby, "I wish someone could have stopped to check on a little girl who was obviously by herself. But on the other hand, it was nice to see there weren't a lot of men walking up to her and random strangers."

I'm not sure that I would notice the flyers or the girl, but if I did, I'd like to think I'd contact security at the very least while keeping an eye on her. I'd certainly hope others would do the same for my kids.