babies

Which Motrin Ad Is Offensive

First, we have the Motrin ad that seems to have enraged baby-wearing moms all across the country. I’m not a mom so it doesn’t really offend me that much but I have to say, the tone in the commercial comes across as if the viewer is dumb. Watch it for yourself and see if you’re offended by it.

Next we have a spoof on the original commercial with a totally different source of back pain. Let me know if this one was more offensive than the first.

One thing is for certain, the publics outcry from sites such as YouTube and Twitter forced the advertising agency that works with Motrin to pull the ad from their website along with their various media outlets. However, the ad is printed in magazines that are on news stands. I’m wondering if I should purchase one to save it as a collectible?

Before You Name That Baby

Ever wonder why there is so many people around you with the same name? I do. Thanks to NameTrends.net, I discovered that my first name “Jeffrey” was a name given to many baby males during the time frame of 1945-1993 with peaks in 1961 and 1968. I was born in 1983. That is quite a lot of Jeffrey’s.

NameTrends sources its data from the social security records which are publicly available and contains the national popularity of each of the top 1000 male and female names for each year since 1880. It also contains state-specific popularity of the top 100 male and female names for each year since 1960. The state-level popularity data is only available for the top 100 names in each state so keep that in mind when your browsing around the state map. NameTrends also provides visual data that allows you to see similar names or variations of names over time.

According to NameTrends, the following names were also popular during the same time frame:

  • Randy
  • Brenda
  • Wendy
  • Brent

Those names which were popular and began with the same letter as mine include:

  • Jacob
  • Joshua
  • Joseph
  • James
  • Jayden

Looking at the state by state popularity map for my name, I discovered that in 1983 (the year I was born) the closest I came to being number 1 in the top 100 names was Connecticut and Massachusetts, both ranked at number 17.

Considering I have already been named, it is not going to do me much good but I find it interesting how my first name was popular in the 1940s to the 1980s and now it has started to die off. I wonder if that is because of the baby boomer generation finally beginning to level off or if my name simply isn’t popular to use anymore.

Dive into the site and report back with your findings related to your name. The data is confined to U.S. residents only.

Selling Babies On Ebay

According to a story published out of Berlin, Germany via Reuters, police apprehended a 23 year old woman after she tried to sell her 8 month old son on Ebay. The mother told police it was a joke, but I don’t think the police thought it was funny. By the way, the Ebay auction read as follows:

Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.

The opening bid was $1.57 with no bidders during the two hours the auction was online before being yanked off shortly there after. Perhaps the crying aspect of the deal put people off from bidding. Would you buy someone on eBay, let alone a baby?