849-Comment from 'Pope'

To be fair His Eminence is just the Pope of us Gregs, not the Pope.

To be fair His Eminence is just the Pope of us Gregs, not the Pope.

Why did they ever get away from Pope Gregorys anyway? We had 16 (plus 2 antipopes!) one of whom was a Great and another who rewrote the calendar.

Frankly it's nice to have a Pope at risk for a dead girl scandal for a change.

We had 16 (plus 2 antipopes!)

Doesn't that make it 14?

I really hope that all Gregs on this site make sure to come to this thread and affirm their allegiance to Greg Pope. We're off to a good start.

Wonderful...

It's bad enough that I can't really Google myself because of the name.

Lucky for the Giants that the most prominent Baseball Pope couldn't fly. Not even Divine Intervention could save him or his team from this Mother of all Miracle home runs.

It's bad enough that I can't really Google myself because of the name.

This is both feature and bug. My name is very easy to Google, just a couple of me world wide.

This is both feature and bug. My name is very easy to Google, just a couple of me world wide.

There's actually another Dan Szymborski out there, in Illinois or Michigan. I assume we're related (but don't know how), but I've decided that he's my arch-nemesis.

In this spirit, I'd like to call back to page 2...

I was in a meeting yesterday where someone put an apostrophe in the wrong place (employee's when they meant employees') and one person asked about the rule. No problem, I explained it. Then they asked about names ending in "S" and I was able to tell them that doing "Charles'" is an older form, not as commonly used, not recommended by many style guides, but AP still uses it so they could expect to see it in newspapers, etc.

I understand the confusion between s's and s' but cannot fathom why so many folks -- even some folks here -- would write "employee's" when referring to multiple people.

I understand the confusion between s's and s' but cannot fathom why so many folks -- even some folks here -- would write "employee's" when referring to multiple people.

It is understood that workers are owned by there employer and the possesive is an attempt to note that and fight back against the MAN! Or not.

Dave Barry usually makes me wince but is good on the misuse of apostrophes here

Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?

A. The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small- business signs to alert the reader that an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand-lettered small- business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.

There's actually another Dan Szymborski out there, in Illinois or Michigan. I assume we're related (but don't know how), but I've decided that he's my arch-nemesis.

My only living namesake I'm aware of is a competitive beard-grower. I keep hoping there'll be a beardathon in the Bay Area & he shows up.

There is a Benjamin _D_ Hitz to whom Kurt Vonnugut dedicated most of his books. (My MI is C). There are a few of us on Facebook.

There's another Jim Wisinski out there who I believe currently works in a golf pro shop, I think he's close to my age too.

I am the only one with my name (first + last).
For years, googling my last name turned up page after page of me, but online pseudonyms and lack of real world accomplishment pretty much wiped that out. (Not that that stuff was interesting, but who knows if a prospective employer would hate baseball or my other pursuits.)

I would never work for anyone who actively hated baseball. I once read a statistic that the vast majority of suicide bombers had no interest in the sport, I don't want to take the risk.

YR: The vast majority of suicide bombers also have no interest in sending me their money. Just FYI.

There's actually another Dan Szymborski out there, in Illinois or Michigan. I assume we're related (but don't know how), but I've decided that he's my arch-nemesis.

I have two doppelgangers, one used to be a geology professor, but has now turned to the darkside and works for an Oil Company

the other one very well may be the oldest living Catholic Priest in the US (if not the world)

When I wrote for a short time for the business weekly in Little Rock (after my stint as an editor at the daily newspaper), I had the same name as the VP of the state banking association. After I moved to Alabama, I found out he'd done the same.

As far as I know, we've never been seen in the same room at the same time.

I've also gotten at least two phone calls over the last few years asking if I'm a certain music teacher. (The only thing I've ever played is the stereo.)

A google search of my name is pretty fun actually

1st two hits are both my facebook page related (meh)
hits three and four are my portrait as a 19th century baseball playing fox
hit five is stat page in the Scarborough Adult Baseball League (which for some reason has a baseball card of Don Mossi as my bio shot)
hit six is my stat page in the British Baseball Federation

Don Mossi? No wonder you prefer to misrepresent yourself as a baseball-playing fox.

I am pretty much the older me I have ever come close to finding, because, while there are a few Justin (my last name)s out there, there aren't any with my two middle names.

Cheating a bit, but it only takes two MLB players, Greg Vaughn and Jason Kubel, to get my three names.

EDIT: Actually Alben Koebel who played 89 games in the Class D Ohio State League over 1941-1942 is a better fit.

My wife has a pretty unique name. If you google her name, she is the top 7 links, plus her facebook picture and another picture of her is listed. She is not famous, except in our house.

There are thousands of me.

By the way, if you go to howmanyofme.com, it shows how many people have your name

Link

There are thousands of Swabodas? BTW, I've always wondered if your handle comes from the Frederick Forsythe novel The Devil's Alternative

howmanyofme.com

Yeah, there are 2 or fewer of me. There are fewer than 117 of my last name, which I think is the lowest default setting, all probably related.

Yeah, there are 2 or fewer of me. There are fewer than 117 of my last name, which I think is the lowest default setting, all probably related.

I got 117 of my last name as well.
And 1 or fewer of me! As I'm not American I assume that means that one is not me.

howmanyofme.com informs me that there are "1 or fewer people in the U.S." with my name. Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?

Misrlou, my kids have a made-up last name, formed by smooshing together my wife's and my last names. I'm extremely confident nobody else has their last name. That name got the same "117 or fewer" message.

There are thousands of Swabodas? BTW, I've always wondered if your handle comes from the Frederick Forsythe novel The Devil's Alternative

No, when I lived in Eastern Europe, I discovered the word swoboda means freedom. I am a mets fan and always thought Swoboda was a cool name. Actually in Ball Four, Joe Morgan talks about how it should be a superstar name. Of course, he wasn't that good.

In terms of books, I was thinking more of 1984, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. My last name is Cox, actually.

Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL) is good.
Vseukrayinske obyednannia Svoboda not so much.

My name is fairly rare, but due to my role in my industry, my name pops in the exhibits of 100s of regulatory filings with the SEC.

349 of me - I would have expected more, my names seem rather common to me.

No, when I lived in Eastern Europe, I discovered the word swoboda means freedom. I am a mets fan and always thought Swoboda was a cool name. Actually in Ball Four, Joe Morgan talks about how it should be a superstar name. Of course, he wasn't that good.

In The Devil's Alternative, Ukranian freedom fighters take over a supertanker in the North sea, and demand their breatheran be released or else they will blow up the ship. The leader called himself Svoboda, which he claimed meant freedom.

It had been a while since I tried the exercise, so I put my name as "first last" (with the quotation marks) into Google to see what would happen. OK, so I know my name is fairly uncommon. But even so I was surprised. Except for a few scattered generic "we have names" sites, nearly every entry through 10 pages was unquestionably connected to me. My Rate My Professor page is in there - only it looks like there must be some other sites doing the same thing. There was a Texas marriage record - that was me. And so on. On the first page, there was a link for images. Now that was a mixed bag. Some were pictures of me, including a high school yearbook portrait (who uploads stuff like that?). Some were pictures of formulas that probably come from posts I've made on line. Some were of people who are not me but whom I can instantly identify, such as my Ph.D. advisor. But many of the images have no connection to me at all.

But what, other than the images, in those 10 pages of links, wasn't me? Well, somewhere on the third or fourth page, there was a player card from some league of Sim Dynasty Baseball for a fictional catcher with my name, a brief career in the 1970's, deceased some time in the 1990's. Could one of you guys have been using my name?

Google images brings up one picture of me, which is somehow on the site radaris.com. Which is actually kind of a creepy site because you see how much info about you is out there and easily revealed to anyone looking. It has my immediate family correct including our ages and on the page about me is a huge list of people with my name or my name and the same first initial. Funny thing is that there's only one record for me (under Jim not James) and it has my sister's birthday listed instead of my own. My parents and sister have lots of entries though including what I assume is my dad's address from when he lived in PA. Weird stuff.

So Rob Portman decided to support gay rights as his son comes out. Is it just me or does the GOP only decide to show liberal values when close family or friends are involved? They only like gays when they know one, support research into X when a family memeber has X and so on.

I would say that is everyone, but most democrats support that stuff with or without knowing someone personally. I mean I am glad he has decided to move to the side of light on 1 issue at least. Maybe it is the politics of it, you need a family member to "provide cover" for your support, otherwise you get voted out of office or something.

Edit: References to me take up almost the whole first page of Google results (after telling Google I really did type my last name correctly, no I don't want to search the other more common spelling). There are some dead guys mixed in also, probably ancestors.

I tried googling myself, and found two other people with my name. One of them was a Handgun Instructor at S&S Firearms. Gotta love it!

Still pretty conservative on marriage/women/homosexuality, but a definite step forward.

I've heard this criticism a lot and, while I understand it, having a lot of disagreement with these church doctrines, I don't get it because there was NO WAY a pope would be elected who was going to say being gay is fine and women should be priests and divorce is cool and everyone should be given 5000 condoms. It just isn't going to happen.

For one thing, the people electing popes are old, conservative men.

For a second, for every "liberal" Catholic in the west there are a two conservatives in the west and a dozen conservatives in the developing world. Hold a straight up democratic election involving every Catholic on the planet on these issues that the US focuses on and the liberal side loses in a landslide of epic proportions.

But the church still wields a lot of influence and is in position to do a lot of good (and bad). If they elect a thoughtful, non-corrupt, intellectual who can clean house in the Vatican, I'm pretty cool if he still thinks women shouldn't be priests.

If you want the Catholic Church to hold different views on the issues described above, what you really want is a different church. If you live in the US you are, of course, free to find one. They're out there. Although, I'll be honest, my first thought attending mass with my wife (who is/was Catholic at the time) is that, wow, this church is really liberal (when compared to the protestant churches in middle America I was raised in).


For me, the selection was cool as it could be simply because NPR fumbled as badly as they did. They seemed completely unprepared for his election. Which seems odd if he was a key contender last time. The announcement came during Talk of the Nation and neither the host nor the reporter they went to seemed to have any clue to any fact about the guy except he was from Argentina. The reporter eventually just punted and said she'd go do some research (which was a nice, honest admission for what had been obvious for 30 seconds - that she hadn't a clue who he was).

howmanyofme.com

There are over 7500 people with my name. I suspect 20 years ago there were a lot more.

Only 7 with my wife's name. If she had taken my name, there would be 21000 of her. A factor of 3000 with one name change.

Using the full version of my first name, howmanyofme.com shows 1,522 of us. Using the diminutive (as I do), 159.

I got the impression that howmanyofme does something like (% commonness of first name) * (% commonness of last name) * (# of people). Don't know if they made any attempts to look at correlations with types of names or not, would guess not. Also, think they're database is likely truncated wrt uncommon names - hence caveats like 117 or less.
My last name is, like, 150 years old - was changed prior to immigration from Olsen. There's a California wing I've never met and a few people in Norway, but otherwise, I know 'em all.

For me, the selection was cool as it could be simply because NPR fumbled as badly as they did.

That's interesting - I hadn't researched it but I had seen him get press this time as well.

For me, the selection was cool as it could be simply because NPR fumbled as badly as they did. They seemed completely unprepared for his election. Which seems odd if he was a key contender last time. The announcement came during Talk of the Nation and neither the host nor the reporter they went to seemed to have any clue to any fact about the guy except he was from Argentina. The reporter eventually just punted and said she'd go do some research (which was a nice, honest admission for what had been obvious for 30 seconds - that she hadn't a clue who he was).

I watched the announcement on CNN and they were just as clueless. As the Cardinal (don't remember his name or title) told the crowd, there was about 45 seconds of near silence from the talking heads. Some paper shuffling and some muffled whispers is all.

I got the impression that howmanyofme does something like (% commonness of first name) * (% commonness of last name) * (# of people). Don't know if they made any attempts to look at correlations with types of names or not, would guess not.

Lets see what they say if we mix some name types:
There are 2 people in the U.S. named Mohammed McMahon.
There are 3 people in the U.S. named Mohammed Schwartz.

With a sample of two, it seems to me that they don't do much correlation, but I think I'd like to meet those guys if they exist.

There are supposedly 19 people with my exact name, which seems about right.

There are 2 people in the U.S. named Mohammed McMahon.
There are 3 people in the U.S. named Mohammed Schwartz.

MoMac and MoSchwartzie are my buds! They hang out with Moishe Al-Aqsa and Yarisbel O'Dwyer at the club most Fridays.

They must be doing an actual search, then. If they are simply calculating on probabilities, the two names in 894 would have to give fewer than my nephew's name, which brings up only 1 (or fewer).

I've heard this criticism a lot and, while I understand it, having a lot of disagreement with these church doctrines, I don't get it because there was NO WAY a pope would be elected who was going to say being gay is fine and women should be priests and divorce is cool and everyone should be given 5000 condoms. It just isn't going to happen.

I mean, I agree with you here. It's still disappointing because I feel like the Church is wrong on those issues. Those issues are pretty much why I am not a practicing Catholic. FYIW, I don't lump divorce in there. I find the Catholic teaching on Divorce okay.

For a second, for every "liberal" Catholic in the west there are a two conservatives in the west and a dozen conservatives in the developing world. Hold a straight up democratic election involving every Catholic on the planet on these issues that the US focuses on and the liberal side loses in a landslide of epic proportions.

No doubt. However, the Catholic church is not a democratic institution. The Church is way out in front on issues like the Death Penalty, social justice and other things. Death Penalty would also lose in an election. Respecting gay people's choice on who they want to love is not an issue that is subject to majority belief. (I'm not saying that you hold those views, just pointing out my feelings on it.)

As far as joining another church ... I'm not a big fan of most protestant dogma. Anything with predetermination is out. Anglicans are out--it's hard to get into religions founded based on one man's need to get off.

Anglicans are out--it's hard to get into religions founded based on one man's need to get off.

Well, Henry was indeed a womanizer, but he didn't need the church's blessing to sleep with another woman. He was doing plenty of that on his own. What he needed was the Church's blessing to marry another woman who was more likely to give him a legitimate male heir, his country having recently come out of 100 years of turmoil and bloodshed as a result of murky dynastic succession. And under different circumstances, the church would have readily given it's sanction, but for the political wranglings of another monarch, Charles V. Under the circumstances, Henry did the right and proper thing for his country, and eventually gave them the Tudor successor they needed, though not without a few bumps in the road.

As far as joining another church ... I'm not a big fan of most protestant dogma. Anything with predetermination is out. Anglicans are out--it's hard to get into religions founded based on one man's need to get off.

We take our kids to the ELCA. Service is very, very similar. Theology is different at some key points but not as different as the Calvinist lines, especially those that came through England. Super-liberal (Missouri Synod, not so much!) in terms of personal choices, gay pastors, women pastors, etc. Strong social conscience. More of an interest in faith/doctrine/theology than other lefty Protestant denominations, in my experience. I am sure it varies place to place, like most things do. And you have to get used to the height! In NYC, you can tell the lapsed Catholics from the Midwest ELCA transplants by lining them up by height.

Wow, I need more sleep - I don't know how many "there" v. "they're" v. "their" type typos I've made lately. Blergh.

Anyway, I read howmanyofme's FAQ. They do assume first and last name independence.

***

If you're comfortable elaborating on what you do or don't want in a church, tshipman, I'd listen...