Stephanie Madoff, the wife of Bernie Madoff's son Mark, wants to change her last name to "Morgan," for obvious reasons. So if you come across a "Stephanie Morgan," you know...we're sure she's nice and all. [WSJ. Pic via]

Notable trend noted by the New York Times news-paper: Transgender individuals often choose to change their names along with their sex. And New York City is a popular place to do so! The more you know. There used to be a law that name changes had to be advertised in the news-paper, which had the fringe benefit of helping transgender people to make new friends:

The Simpsons just celebrated its 20th Anniversary, and names like Homer and Bart have become ingrained upon our cultural identity. However, they've invented many other names, not as immediately recognizable. Here's a massive compilation of the best and funniest.

Only when you see the list of most popular baby names do you realize that America is not just a bunch of chik'n-consuming Wal-Mart zombies, but rather one big elegant catalogue of Victorian Body Shop models.

Sometimes it really does make sense for a famous brand to change its name. It happened to Uncle Adolf's Old-Tyme KKKandy, and now it's happening to Radio Shack. Too bad the new name is even worse.

What to call the Nigerian joint venture with Russia's Gazprom, hmmm? Hmm. "Nigaz." That's an even worse faux pas than Gazprom's Ukrainian joint venture, "VladimirPutinIsAnEvilFucker." [Post your own joint ventures in the comments!]

We know why you're not accepted in the fashion world: because you don't know how to pronounce the names of all those foreign designers. Don't be ashamed. Many people pronounce "Dolce & Gabbana" like uncouth Americans. Youtube can help!

Sears' new female-targeted marketing site: BustedMoms.com. What could go wrong?

God, this decade? It sucked. Wes Anderson stopped making good movies, the Vikings lost Mike Tomlin and hired Brad Childress, and this complete asshole named George Bush was our president. For like eight years! Ugh!

Ring the alarm: the paper of record is treating rappers separately and unequally! In a surprisingly fresh piece of analysis, the Columbia Journalism Review unearths the NYT's sneaky tendency to "birth-name" rappers more than other musicians. (They also coin the term "birth-name," which I like, although for the sake of hip hop consistency they should say "government-name"). That means, for example, that RZA gets second-referenced as "Robert Diggs," but Marilyn Manson gets to keep his stage name throughout Times stories. That is so foul! Government names are nerdy. Plus, culture editor Sam Sifton gives a nonsense nilla explanation for the discrepancy:

This cute thing with the Googlegangers in the Times? You know, where people search for other people across the country with their same name, and feel some sort of mystical kinship, or something, because of innate biological self-similarity biases? Some people have funny last names that were made up out of whole cloth a couple generations ago at Ellis Island or somewhere, like in An American Tail. These people have no Googlegangers, which is a stupid word, because everyone on Earth with that last name is directly related to them and probably embarrassed by what's being done with it on the Internet. The closest non-relative these hypothetical people can manage to track down on the Google might be Dana Perino. So screw you, "Jon Lee" and "Jason Rodriguez." [NYT]

Air America host Randi Rhodes called Hillary Clinton a whore! Oh nooooooo outrage!! Rhodes, who has always been a cross between an outrageous stand-up comic and a naughty drive-time shock jock, has a regular show on the liberal radio network that no one listens to. The clip of her calling Hillary a whore was taken somewhere or other at some point in time and posted to YouTube by some guy. It's a scandal to those who need to actually pretend to take Randi Rhodes seriously in order to feel outraged about something. Also she calls Geraldine Ferraro a whore but no one cares. Anyway, Air America suspended her. Clip after the jump!

Greenpeace is satellite tracking some whales for some sort of whale-saving purpose and they'd like you to help name them. They have a list of 29 incredibly twee names (Atticus! Jacques! Libertad!) and one awesome one, so it's up to you to go vote for "Mister Splashy Pants." [Greenpeace]