Two posts here mentioned by Maddy, the first is an essay on the history of jokes in the former USSR. The second is a great interactive site showing the popularity of the top thousand names from the last century and a half in the U.S.
So, Ben Lewis' essay, Hammer & Tickle, is a great, if short, text investigating the history of Communist jokes in the former Soviet Union. Pretty funny, if sometimes in a pretty dark way. For example, "When was the first Russian election? The time that God put Eve in front of Adam and said, 'Go ahead, choose your wife.'"
There's also The Baby Name Wizard which is a graphical representation of the popularity of any name which has been in the top thousand since the 1880s. Interesting to see the significant drop in biblical names (though it seems the only really significant girls' name has been 'Mary'). Seems, though, that my parents were pretty trendy with Daniel being ranked 7th in the 80s. As for the guys on the right, Chris and Matt were/are in the same boat as me, while Maddy, Sandro's folks were about a decade ahead of the time. (Vicki, you're parents were about thirty years out of date.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment