Biblical Baby Names Fall Out of Favor in US, Uptick in Names from Pop Culture such as Erotic Shades of Grey

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Biblical names are out and pop culture is in for America’s newborns – if this year’s list of most popular baby names are anything to go by. The once hearty trend of parents naming their babies after Biblical scripture has shown a steady decline in recent years according to an annual baby name report by BabyCenter.com.

What can be gathered in supplement shows a perhaps surprising uptick in inspiration from pop culture such as erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, TV show Downton Abbey and even Apple electronics.

TOP 10 BOYS NAMES:

Aiden
Jackson
Ethan
Liam
Mason
Noah
Lucas
Jacob
Jayden
Jack

TOP 10 GIRLS NAMES:

Sophia
Emma
Olivia
Isabella
Ava
Lily
Zoe
Chloe
Mia
Madison

That’s a stark contrast from 12 years ago when Biblical names dominated the top 10 list, in 2000 it being: Michael, Jacob, Matthew, Joseph, Joshua, and Andrew.
For girls in 2000 it was Hannah, Sarah and Elizabeth.

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Why the Founding Fathers Matter

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It has become typical in school text books, in public discussions, and in the smug wisdom of Progressives, to diminish the words and actions of those who led the founding of the United States. However, now that the nation has gone through what Al Gore called a “wrenching transformation” away from limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty (all major ingredients to making the US the freest and most prosperous nation in history) it’s time to listen again to their wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson warned us to …

Avoid Sustainable Development: “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”

Avoid the Welfare State: “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Avoid Massive Government Debt: “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

Avoid Government Over-regulation: “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”

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Matt Damon: ‘The Game is Rigged’

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Matt Damon rather infamously said in 2011 that he wouldn’t mind if President Barack Obama — whom the actor had supported in 2008 — was a one-term president because he’d rather have a “one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done.” (The comment even earned Damon some flak from the president himself.) But, he still did his part to give Obama a second term, admitting that he still voted for him in November.

“I assume there will be some Supreme Court appointments in this next term; that alone was reason to vote for him,” Damon told Playboy magazine in its January 2013 issue. “I don’t think I said anything a lot of people weren’t thinking. It’s easier now more than ever in my life to feel the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn’t matter.”

Damon also was asked for his thoughts on Clint Eastwood’s performance at the Republican National Convention (the two worked together on 2010’s “Hereafter”).

“I heard the backlash, but I never saw the whole thing because I just didn’t want to see my friend … you know. Look, his knowledge of filmmaking is so vast and deep that he can wing it beautifully on the set. What he did at the RNC was an unrehearsed bit he decided to do at the last minute. You can’t go onstage and do 12 minutes of stand-up completely unrehearsed. But I agree with what Bill Maher said — Clint killed it at the convention for 12 minutes, and the audience loved him. I wouldn’t do that unless I spent a month rehearsing.”

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The Disappearing American Father: 1/3 of US Children Now Born Without a Father at Home

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Fathers are fast disappearing from American homes and one in three children, or approximately 15 million live without one according to the U.S. Census. The problem is especially pronounced in black families, where the figure increases to over half or around five million children.

In fact as the census recorded the fact that 160,000 new families with children were added, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million and nearly five million live without a mother. These astonishing figures can be unfavorably compared with 1960, when just 11 percent of all American children lived in homes without fathers.

Blame for the prevalence of low income families where children fall into crime and drugs has been laid at the door of these damning numbers.

‘People look at a child in need, in poverty or failing in school, and ask, ‘What can we do to help?’ said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative.

‘But what we do is ask, ‘Why does that child need help in the first place?’ And the answer is often it’s because the child lacks a responsible and involved father’…

Men walking away from babies is a problem concentrated to the inner cities, with Baltimore having only 38 percent of families that have two parents and St. Louis has 40 percent of families that have two children. The primary indicator for the problem is income – 12 percent of black families who live below the poverty line boast two parents, while among poor Latino families that figure is 41 percent and 32 percent among white families.

In all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both their parents while across every state, seven out of ten white children do.

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Plea For Help From Chinese Labor Camp Worker Paid $1.61 per MONTH Found Stuffed in Oregon Woman’s Halloween Decorations from Kmart

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photo credit: kent wang

Oregon mother Julie Keith expected to find Styrofoam headstones in the graveyard kit she bought at Kmart for Halloween. What she didn’t expect was a desperate plea for help from one of the Chinese laborers forced to make the holiday decorations in brutal conditions.

The 42-year-old charity worker from Portland discovered the chilling letter hidden between the two novelty headstones when she opened the kit in October.

‘Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization,’ the unsigned note, that was folded into eighths, read.’Thousands people here who are under the persicution [sic] of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.’

The letter’s author said the Halloween product was made in Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang, China, where laborers are forced to work for 15 hours a day without time off on the weekends and holidays.

‘Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. [sic] Nearly no payment,’ they wrote in choppy English accompanied by Chinese characters. The plea said workers at the labor camp make only 10 yuan per month – the equivalent to $1.61.

The China director at Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, told The Oregonian that the origin or authenticity of the letter couldn’t be confirmed. ‘We’re in no position to confirm the veracity or origin of this,’ she said. ‘I think it is fair to say the conditions described in the letter certainly conform to what we know about conditions in re-education through labor camps.’

China’s re-education through labor is a system of punishment that allows for detention without trial. Masanjia labor camp is located in the industrialized capital of the Liaoning Province in northeast China.

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Navy Caves to Atheists, Removes Nativity Scene From Bahrain Base

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A live Nativity scene planned at the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was dropped from a holiday program after an atheist group complained that it amounted to command sponsorship of a Christian event and could put servicemembers in the Muslim-majority country at risk.

The live nativity was initially scheduled for Dec. 6 during an annual holiday tree-lighting ceremony hosted by Naval Support Activity Bahrain. The celebration also advertised appearances from “Mr. & Mrs. Claus and Camel,” according to a promotional flyer.

The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers wrote a complaint to the Inspector General responsible for Navy installations, asking that the event be investigated because it promoted “Christianity as the official religion of the base.”

“This violates the Constitution and the mandates of the command to support all belief while privileging none,” the group wrote, according to a post on its website.

The event also could foster misconceptions about the U.S. military’s religious agenda in a Muslim country, the group argued. “This event threatens U.S. security and violates the Constitution as well as command policy,” the group wrote.

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Facelift Using Stem Cells Causes Bones to Grow Out of Eyes

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A Californian woman has been left with bones growing in her eyes after a botched facelift using stem cell injections.

The gruesome tale involves a woman in her Sixties, who is said to have paid $20,000 for the procedure at a Beverly Hills clinic. But three months later, she was still in pain and noticed her right eye was clicking, according to a report in Scientific American.

The woman complained of a clicking sensation when she tried to open her eye. Surgeons later discovered it was tiny fragments of bone grinding together. When it didn’t improve, she visited another cometic surgeon, Dr Allan Wu, and explained she could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange clicking sound.

Dr Wu, of The Morrow Institute in California, told the magazine that when he first heard the woman’s complaint, he wondered if she was imagining things. But after painstaking six-hour surgery, he dug out small chunks of bone from her eyelid and the surrounding tissue. The clicks the woman had heard were the bone fragments grinding against one another.

One theory is the stem cells – which can develop into any tissue in the body – could have reacted with a common dermal filler which contains calcium.

The procedure the woman had is unregulated in America. It involves removing the patient’s stem cells from the blood and injecting them elsewhere in the body.

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Ten Year Old Boy With Terminal Cancer Sworn In to Army

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A ten-year-old boy with terminal cancer received the surprise of his young life this week when his dreams of becoming a U.S. soldier came true.

Khalil Quarles, from Baltimore, had longed to enlist in the army for years before an aggressive form of soft tissue cancer attacked his leg and spread to his lungs in 2011.

And so as a special surprise, troops from the 200th Military Command out of Fort Meade paid him a visit on Wednesday to make the boy an honorary serviceman in the United States Army.

Khalil wore a look of awe and shock as he pledged his allegiance. Earlier in the day, while Skyping with a soldier stationed in Kuwait, he had thought things couldn’t get better.

But as he hobbled outside on his crutches and saw the crowd assembled on his front lawn, the dreams of this little boy with an incurable disease in that moment came true.

The boy’s mother, Cypress Mason told WBal TV of his long battle against the cancer and the multiple rounds of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation he had endured. ‘We decided to just stop the treatment so that Khalil could have the best quality of life that’s possible, being a 10-year-old child, to get to enjoy his life,’ she said.

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Bill Clinton: Champion of Women’s Rights?

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LITTLE ROCK – On Monday, Bill Clinton moderated a discussion about empowering the world’s women.

But the event was also clearly focused on the Clintons themselves. “Friend of Bill” Jerry Jones, senior vice president of Little Rock-based Acxiom, quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the group, reminding them of her words in Beijing to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”

Jones also lamented to the group that the United States, unlike many nations in the world, still hasn’t had a female president. (A possible hint about 2016?)

Hillary Clinton, who is recovering from stomach flu and a fainting spell that gave her a concussion, addressed the group via video before her husband entered the room. In the message, taped prior to her illness, Hillary Clinton praised the city of Little Rock, which this year renamed an airport in her and her husband’s honor, in her brief remarks.

She also said the topic of women was “near and dear to her heart,” especially “how to harness the power of women around the world.”

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Three-Time Olympian Worked as $600/hour Escort

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A three-time U.S. Olympian who was publicity exposed on Thursday as an elite $600-an-hour escort has revealed that her husband knew about her double life and tried to put an end to it. Suzy Favor-Hamilton, a 44-year-old married mother of three, has been working with one of Las Vegas’ top agencies to book ‘dates’ across cities including Las Vegas, Chicago and Houston.

Despite using the name ‘Kelly Lundy’ as she advertised her services through Haley Heston’s Private Collection, her double life has been revealed after she told clients about her real identity, believing there was an unwritten rule they would not speak out.

But now at least one of these clients has contacted The Smoking Gun, which in turn has revealed the details of Favor-Hamilton’s clandestine career, which she now calls a ‘huge mistake.’

Soon after the story appeared online, instantly sparking a furor in the media, Favor-Hamilton took to Twitter to offer her 3,183 followers her side of the story. In one missive, the 44-year-old mother explained that she was initially drawn to escorting ‘because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life.

‘It provided an escape from a life that I was struggling in. It was a double life,’ she wrote.

In another, Favor-Hamilton wrote that the reasons behind her decision to turn to a life of prostitution, while seemingly irrational now, ‘made sense at the time’ and were closely related to depression. ‘As crazy as I know it seems, I never thought I would be exposed, therefore never hurting anybody,’ she said in one Twitter post.

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