All Things Bubba

I'm not sure what's more surprising about this study: the results, or that scientists even asked the question...

Your Initials May Influence Your Job

The initials of your name may influence where you choose to work, new research suggests.

While it sounds like a joke, a well-known psychological theory called the name-letter effect maintains that a person’s behavior may be influenced by his or her name.

As my colleague Stephanie Rosenbloom reported earlier this year, “people like the letters in their own names (particularly their initials) better than other letters of the alphabet.”

...The findings, published in Psychological Science, showed that for about one in nine people whose initials matched their company’s initial, choice of employer seems to have been influenced by the fact that the letters matched.

The authors concluded that they “have demonstrated that people are more likely to work for companies with initials matching their own than to work for companies with other initials.”

Does that explain why Bubba likes baseball?

Speaking of names, Andy Phillips named his new daughter "Isaiah Jewel." Which struck me as an odd name for a girl. I'm not surprised they chose a Biblical name, but I was surprised they gave a boy's name to a baby girl. (FWIW, "Isaiah" is #53 on the list of most popular boy's names in Alabama in 2007.)

Someone posted a comment suggesting that the Book of Isaiah is special to Andy and his wife. I must admit, that hadn't occurred to me. (Heathen that I am. ;-) Most of the people I know around here are Catholic, and they tend to name their kids after saints rather than books of the Bible, if they're religiously inclined. And my admittedly dim knowledge of the Book of Isaiah remembered it as a typical Old Testament book, full of "inside baseball" about current events that were current 10,000 years ago, and a lot about the wrath of god against sinners. But Wikipedia says the last part offers "comfort to a broken people," and perhaps that's the part they like.

I do think Isaiah is a pretty name. But have they doomed her to grow up to work at IBM?

Meanwhile, on the Hot Stove front...the Yankees have sold Darrell Rasner to Japan. And Hank Steinbrenner says the Yanks made a huge offer to Sabathia, and are preparing offers for Lowe and Burnett as well. Not sure if they really intend to sign all three, or if they're trying for three and hoping to land two.