spooky action at a distance

You may have noticed our babyboy poll lurking there in the sidebar. Please cast your vote if you haven’t already.

The poll is symptomatic of a larger problem: that is, while we have a solid lock on girl names, the boy names are proving to be slippery and elusive (note to self: “Morpheus” aint bad). A certain family member has floated a controversial gender-assignment theory that may shed some light on our indecision. The theory agues that, while in utero and right up to the moment of birth, babies are just floating, glowing balls of gender-indeterminate energy, and that their physical selves aren’t fully expressed until they’re directly observed. This could be seen as a kind of gestational derivative of Bell’s Theorem (note to self: add “Bell” to list), or related to the notion of quantum entanglement---what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” Call it epistemological wishy-washiness, or just-in-time cosmic decision-making.

"Einstein". . . that's not bad, either.

The ball-of-energy theory further proposes that, with concentration and serious body english, we can influence whether the baby turns out to be a girl or boy. This opens up a whole Pan/Pandora's box of questions about getting what you wish for versus wishing for what you get. We will studiously avoid that whole debate and instead concentrate on coming up with more baby names. I'm really liking Einstein.