Fort Standard was founded like yesterday by designers Gregory Buntain and Ian Collings, and already they have a tableful of awesome, crystal-faceted balancing blocks handmade from salvaged hardwood and finished in a range of tasty colors, and white.

Fort Standard Balancing Blocks, bag of ten, $85 [fortstandard.com via ro/lu]

The past and the future once again meet in the present, with generally awesome effect.

Because while it seems normal that you can now instantly find and buy a copy of Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley's suddenly indispensable 1888 book, Curiosities Of Puritan Nomenclature, it still feels like a small miracle that you don't need to. Because thanks to the University of California's Digital Library initiative, the entire book is available for immediate and profitable study.

Bardsley apparently spent 12 years collecting and scouring the church registries of England to create what seems to be the first definitive history of the adoption of Biblical names in the country.

It suddenly makes sense that the proliferation of scripture names like Adam,, John, James, etc. followed the release of "mystery" plays, which dramatized key Bible stories for the masses. And that more obscure scripture names only came into wider use as English translations of the Bible became available. And that hilarity occasionally ensued when, "the parents [would open] the Bible haphazard, according to the village tradition, and select the first name the eye fell on." And also when they wouldn't:

It was but a year ago a little child was christened Tellno in a town within six miles of Manchester, at the suggestion of a cotton-spinner, the father, a workman of the name of Lees, having asked his advice. "I suppose it must be a Scripture name," said his master. "Oh yes ! that's of course." "Suppose you choose Tellno," said his employer. "That'll do,'* replied the other, who had never heard it before, and liked it the better on that account. The child is now Tellno Lees, the father, too late, finding that he had been hoaxed.

There is, again, a story of a clergyman making the customary demand as to name from a knot of women round the font. "Ax her," said one.
Turning to the woman who appeared to be indicated, he again asked, '* What name?" "Ax
her," she replied. The third woman, being questioned, gave the same reply. At last he dis-
covered the name to be the Scriptural Achsah, Caleb's daughter -- a name, by the way, which was somewhat popular with our forefathers. No wonder this mistake arose, when Achsah used to be entered in some such manner as this :

** 1743-4, Jan. 3. Baptized Axar Starrs (a woman of ripe
years), of Stockport.

" 1743-4, Jan. 3. Married Warren Davenport, of Stockport,
Esq., and Axar Starrs, aforesaid, spinster." -- Marple, Cheshire.

Axar's father was Caleb Starrs. The scriptural relationship was thus preserved. Achsah crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers, and has prospered there ever since. It is still popular in Devonshire and the south-west of England. All these stories serve to show the quarry whence modern names are hewn.

Read or download or do whatever you like with Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature (1888) [archive.org]

God bless the Puritans and their Biblical baby naming strategies. Or as they might put it, God, please don't damn their infants to a fiery hell for only having a two- or three-word scripture phrase as a given/baptismal name.

Sarah Marshall has a great set of Puritan naming highlights at The Hairpin, culled from Pastor Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley's 12-year labor of love, Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, published in 1888.

Repent Durant, Helpless Henley, and is Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White a cousin to the first Pilgrim born in Plymouth, Peregrine White? Ask God-only-knows Burns.

Your 2012 Baby Name Guide: Puritan Edition [thehairpin via the awl]
Previously: The Peregrine White Cradle

For a moment there, Funny or Die thought comedian Ahna Tessler's short comedy video, which included the new mom of twins breastfeeding, was obscene or whatever, and took it down. But when the Times started asking about it, they decided it was hot instead. And certianly hotter than some random beer ponger's junk. Which is now linked to by the paper of record, btw.

Breast-Feeding Video Prompts Harsher Response Than Intended [nyt]

I barely missed it the other night, but DT reader Rolf sent the link along today. And sure enough, Maurice Sendak's interview with Stephen Colbert is as funny as hell:

It'll be sad when he's gone, which, wow, I wish him all the best and health, too, but maybe we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that the blurb for Colbert's forthcoming kids' book, I Am A Pole (And You Can, Too!) is the last thing Sendak writes.

Grim Colberty Tales with Maurice Sendak, Part 1 [colbertnation]

Wow, among the interesting items Andrew scouted out at Cologne specialty auction house W.G. Herr's most recent sale: this sweet, Swedish, molded ply rocking horse.

The label said it was a special edition made in 1970 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nässjömöbel, a venerable furnituremaker which has been apparently wiped from the face of the Internet except for this horse. It's like the end of A.I., where the aliens just find the robot kid buried in the car or whatever.

Schaukelpferd, Nässjömöbel, 1970, sold for EUR200 [herr-auktionen.de via aapc]
1970's Nässjömöbel rocking horse, etc. [an ambitious project collapsing]

Previously: related: Brio molded ply rocking ox, also from Sweden, c. 1967
Lost Eames molded ply rocking horse

Sometime ago we began a thing where the kids can opt to have their dessert in the bathtub.

That usually only happens when it's what you'd expect: popsicles or a lollipop.

Not Raisin Bran, which is what K2 insisted she really, really wanted for dessert. In the bathtub.

I really have no idea sometimes.

I'm getting chills watching this. It's a 3-D printed record that plays "Still Alive," Jonathan Coulton's song for the credits of Portal. On a vintage Fisher-Price record player. The future, the past, the virtual and the real, all have collapsed into one $41.87 Shapeways order. Wow, $41.87?

3-D printed record - 'Still Alive' [youtube via @jonathancoulton]
'Still Alive' Clockwork Record designed by Pittance, $41.87 [shapeways]
Wow, vintage Fisher Price record players aren't exactly cheap, either [ebay]
Related: Gifford Children's Choir singing my two favorite versions of "Still Alive"

In an interview with the SF Chronicle about playing the mother of a school massacrer in Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Tilda Swinton makes some sober observations about pregnancy and parenting:

Q: It's like an act of atonement and it seems as if she's been atoning for something ever since Kevin was born.

A: And I think before it. I think one of the things is her ambivalence about pregnancy. She never speaks of it and you feel that she never even really acknowledges it herself, but you see her in that locker room with all those other pregnant women who are all kind of in their bodies and feeling the experience and you can see how disgusted she is. That's a real syndrome for so many women, even for women who eventually actually fall in love with their babies quite soon. It's a chunk of change, that pregnancy thing. There's a lot not to love about it, but she has this terrible shame about it, largely because she's living this life that is so isolated and so self-determined within which you get the sense that there is no place for chaos. This is a recipe for disaster. If you're going to encounter becoming a parent, if you're not up for a bit of chaos, let alone a lot of chaos - and I speak as the mother of twins - then you are riding a kind of really dangerous horse.

UNCOMFORTABLE REVELATIONS UPDATE Given the film and the book, I suppose it makes sense, but the marketing strategy for this project turns out to be having Tilda Swinton make highly disturbing comments about parenting to increasingly prominent film critics.

Tilda Swinton on 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' [sfgate.com]
We need to talk about Tilda [rogerebert.com via dt hero dt]

HAHA, all this time everyone's been getting all worked up about Caitlin Flanagan and her pretend-housewifery, and her imaginary teen oral sex epidemic fearmongering, and have been ignoring the real menace II society: her husband, Rob Hudnut.

Hudnut turns out to not just be an executive at Mattel, but the executive producer, the big brain, actually even the lyricist, behind the Barbie DVD series. A decade and 100 million DVDs later, The Awl is only making this vital connection now??

Maria: Here is a quote from Variety:

"We are great believers in the power of little girls," says Rob Hudnut, Mattel executive producer. "We believe they deserve the best entertainment that we can give them. [...]

Illustrating the painstaking nature of the production, Hudnut recalls, "It was the job for six months of one 'Nutcracker' animator to keep Barbie's dress from going over her head. The company has made a serious financial investment in ensuring these movies are the quality that girls deserve."

David: That actually arrives unpacked, doesn't it.

Maria: Barbie's skirt, stubbornly floating over her head! Both Hudnuts trying frantically to keep the damn thing down.

During my formative literary and journalistic years, when I discovered it as source of inspiring, vital writing and reporting, as well as outrageously smart, outrage-inducing statistics, devastatingly presented, Harper's Magazine was led by Lewis Lapham. At one point, I hoped for nothing more for my writing than that it might be excerpted, even, in Lapham's magazine.

And now Lapham's Quarterly has published exactly the kind of ogling pointlessness that made me finally walk away from a book project with a major publisher. And it's so slapdash. I mean, it's like they transcribed a random issue of Us at the dentist's office.

Named By The Stars - Children of the rich and famous [laphamsquarterly.org]

Not sure why, but since checking my twitter last night, I've been worrying that maybe DT's drifted, and that maybe it's missing the big parenting issues, the burning dad questions. That maybe it should really focus on the news new dads can really use right. now.

Or maybe right after posting about freaky baby album cover art from an obscure 1990s colabo EP isn't the best time to ask the question.

In 1999, ahead-of-the-curve appropriationist musicians Negativland did a colabo with their one-hit wonderin' mates, Chumbawamba, remixing THAT SONG with audio of Alexander Berkman's 1932 manifesto The ABC's of Anarchism, the Sex Pistols, and the Teletubbies.

Unfortunately for the band, the EP didn't come out until everyone was totally sick of THAT SONG. Which is too bad, says previously mild-mannered-seeming artist and veteran political hairblogger Peter Huestis, who designed the awesome album art several job changes ago, because it is, "one of Negativland's most entertaining and 'listenable' releases." And I heartily agree.

It's a sign of how kid-clueless I was at the time, and how hard I've apparently worked to block THAT SONG from my brain that until this moment, I had no idea what the original Chumbawamba album cover looked like, either.

Wow, the guy who designed it, Michael Calleia, also did the logo for Stinky & Minky, a wacky, little SoHo [north of Houston, but whatever] store which was one of the first/only places to find vintage kids clothing. You really do never know.

Digital Graveyard: How to design a CD cover for Negativland, 1998-99, Part One; Part Two [sparklepony]
Buy The ABC's of Anarchism for very little money via amazon [amazon]

We try to keep each Playmobil set intact and separate from the others, but I think I see a couple of invasive species in this garden.

Delta, Just, Spin, Glendale, Cement. While none are required, of course, Each of video artist/savant Ryan Trecartin's baby name suggestions would be enhanced by one or more diacritics [offer not valid in all jurisdictions]. [via @ryantrecartin]

Woo-hoo, this is awesome. Though I think Adam Brown, the new dad under the kid above--and behind Fatherhood Is--is underestimating the extent to which his non-Internet-famous twin will resent his sister's Internet fame.

Then again, with a new dad blog that's so smart and funny right out of the gate, I'm sure both kids will build up enough Internet fame to fill their future revenge memoirs. Stay tuned.

Fatherhood is confounding the baby with new sounds [youtube]
Fatherhood is learning a few lessons about the Internet and why you may not want your baby on it [fatherhoodis.com via dadwagon]

There are no details on Richard Prince's collection website about what's going on here, but you know what they say: the first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it's kids made their own covers.

Richard Prince's Own Collection | Books [richardprince.com via karma]

Oh, man, I seriously haven't given two synapses worth of attention to The Wiggles in years until just a few minutes ago, when I was reminded of them by the four blockhead toy dudes in that Antonio Vitali car.

And lo and behold, it turns out Greg, the original Yellow Wiggle, has apparently just announced he's coming back after his illness-induced, five-year hiatus. And they made the announcement by totally sacking that other dude who took over for the Yellow Wiggle and kept the money-minting franchise going since 2006.

And then Anthony, the Blue Wiggle, puts his asshole hat on, and explains the sudden dumping to Melbourne's Herald Sun this way:

"I don't want to speak for the guy ... I don't know how he feels."

"What Sam does now is Sam's thing. His contract has come to an end.

Sam was just doing a job. He was a hired hand ... I haven't spoken to him."

Ex-Wiggle Sam Moran Thrown Under Big Red Car [heraldsun.com.au]
Previously: BREAKING: Greg Wiggle Diagnosed with Darrin Stephens Syndrome
FLASH: Where's Greg? Wiggle To Stop Wiggling
My last, best Babble piece, c.2007: The Wiggles Industrial Complex

Maybe someone with their Antonio Vitali retrospective catalogues handy can tell us for sure, but I think this sweet, signed toy car is from the US toy collection the Swiss designer launched after he did his work for Creative Playthings [and Childcraft? Am I remembering that right?]

Or maybe they'll keep their traps shut until they can scoop up this rather fine-looking example for their own selves. We'll know soon enough.

Antonio Vitali Wooden Toy Car Signed - GREAT Condition Creative Playthings ? MCM, currently $9.99+9 s/h, auction ends Jan. 29 [ebay via seller liz]
Sorry to stick this in your head: Big Red Car by The Wiggles [youtube]

It really is the little differences. Like having to get government approval for your kid's name. Seriously, rest-of-the-world, what is up with that?

Less noble concerns play a role, too. First names that imitate lofty titles remain the most frequently disallowed in New Zealand. Registrars often frustrate enterprising parents trying to name their infants Justice, King, Prince, Baron and Duke. Strict laws in Sweden once aimed to stop people creating family names that imitated those already in use, says Staffan Nyström at Uppsala University. Requests to change a last name must still pass through the patent office there. Patriarchy remains entrenched in countries like Italy that refuse to allow married women to pass their maiden names on to their children, even in a double-barrelled surname.

In the end, though, the Economist fails to accomplish much more than a bemused shrug.

Baby Names: Thanks, Mum [economist.com]

So I just got back from chaperoning the kid's 2nd grade field trip to the National Gallery. Where I spent most of the bus ride explaining to her car-obsessed classmate that real Porsches only have two doors.

Seriously, the Cayenne is worse than Jar Jar Binks and the Clone Wars combined.

Finally, not only does my blogging procrastination pay off, I get to call it a protest against censorship!

Yesterday, the 3-D printing gurus at MakerBot unveiled the first MakerBot Playsets, a print-at-home, 1:18-scale dollhouse castle full of princesses, Utah Teapots, and curvy furniture and whatnot. Which is fine.

But today, they launched the MakerBot Playset Rocket. Which is awesome, even without the LED ground effects. Of course, there is a model for a Captain Kirk's Chair. Why do you even need to ask?

Introducing the MakerBot Playsets & the MakerBot Fairytale Castle [makerbot via boingboing]
MakerBot Rocket Playset [thingiverse]

"Today, India and China eliminate more girls than the number of girls born in the United States every year."

That's the opening line in the trailer for It's A Girl!, Christian filmmaker Evan Grae Davis's upcoming documentary on the widespread practice of female infanticide in the world's two largest countries. Sometimes it's through sex-selective abortion, but there's also the old-fashioned way, of just cold killing girls, or abandoning them to die:

Activists attribute a culture of valuing children by their economic potential to South Asia's patriarchal social model in which men are the sole breadwinners. Sons both carry the family name and work from a young age. Daughter, on the other hand, impose the burden of a dowry before leaving the home upon marriage. Strict moral codes, onerous cultural expectations and demanding domestic responsibilities are all forces that further subjugate women.

Which risks turning this vast, serious problem into little more than a throw-up-your-hands, WTF moment. I'd like to be wrong here.

It's a girl: The three deadliest words in the world [independent uk via kottke]
It's A Girl! film site [itsagirlmovie.com by shadowline films]

Master Henry Archibald, Montreal, QC, 1865

Via Retronaut comes a very nice selection of photos of mid-19th century Canadian children posing grimly with toys, from the digitized collections of the Musee McCord Museum in Quebec. The images were published in connection to a 2011 exhibition, Toys, which looked at the emergence of the perception of childhood as a distinct phase of life.

As this photo of a shifty-looking kid smoking and hanging out with a chicken, part of Retronaut's "Historic WTF?" collection, is uncredited, his Canadianness is uncertain at this time.

More like 1860-1900: Children with Toys, c. 1860 [retronaut via dt reader sara]
Toys | Jouets - McCord Museum flickr stream [flickr]

On Wednesday the 18th, many people, organizations, websites and companies will stage one-day Internet strike, shutting their sites down in protest of two pieces of legislation currently before the US Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA] and the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA].

Both of these laws would give large media and entertainment companies extraordinary power to censor and block websites without judicial review, and the technical implementations of the law threaten the basic functionality of the web itself.

If you are a US citizen or resident, I urge you to study the law and its impact. The Jan. 1 column by the NY Times' David Carr is a good place to start. Then please contact your congressional delegation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation can connect you immediately with your representatives in Congress.

And then consider contacting the entertainment conglomerates whose lobbying organizations crafted the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the first place. They include Scholastic; Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.; the Walt Disney Company, parent company of ABC, ESPN, Baby Einstein--and Babble.

I used to work for Disney. I was involved in their earliest forays into technology and the web. I've written for Babble. The company's chief lobbyist was my roommate and one of my best friends in college. We're friends with Viacom's lobbyist, too. I'm not trying to demonize them by criticizing their companies' attempts to get laws enacted that benefit their businesses. But those laws would also do incredible and real damage to the internet and to the culture and freedom of expression embodied in it, without providing any real remedy for these companies' claims of economic harm.

Whatever the results of the Internet blackout, SOPA and PIPA will not disappear tomorrow. Please pay attention, and please help to stop these seriously flawed bills from becoming law.

SOPA Stroke - Jan. 18 [sopastrike]
Technical examination of SOPA and PIPA [reddit]

MetaFilter has a nice thread about kids books by people you might not have expected to write kids books. Many of them have been mentioned on DT before: Gertrude Stein [twice, kind of]; bell hooks; Graham Greene; and Sylvia Plath, of course.

And there's a whole blog about such books, We, Too, Were Children, Mr. Barrie, which is very handy and attractive. I will be raiding it shortly.

Meanwhile, there is much you should check out and comment upon.

We, Too, Were Children, Mr. Barrie, by Ariel S. Winter [wetoowerechildren]
"Once upon a time there was an elephant who did nothing all day." - E. E. Cummings [metafilter]

The color is basically like shooting pure, undiluted 2002 right into your veins, but unless the finish and quality are an problem, this new-condition, vintage Philippe Starck diaper backpack actually looks kind of nice.

Diaper Back Pack - PHILIPPE STARCK for TARGET--Baby Collection-Rare NEW, first bid $4.95+10 s/h, auction ends Jan. 22 [ebay]
UPDATE It sold for $34.50, including shipping.

Last Summer, David Zwirner Gallery screened a couple of documentaries about Donald Judd, including The Artist's Studio, a 2010 remix of vintage 1970s footage by Michael Blackwood.

Blackwood had filmed Judd and his family both in Marfa [in 1975] and in his Spring Street studio [above, in 1972], for American Art in the Sixties.

Which helps put a date on those kids' toys and art filling the background.

The toy truck in the corner and the Radio Flyer trike are obvious; what I wonder about is that kid-sized body painted on what looks to be a sheet of plywood. Didn't Judd give up painting in the 60s?

And what in tarnation is that orange rocking thing? Where'd that come from? And most importantly, where is it now?

The Artist's Studio (1972/2010), dir. Michael Blackwood [michaelblackwoodproductions via the colour store]
Previously: Donald Judd photocollage/dollhouse schematic
Kids and Minimalism: At home with the Judds

Alright, the unrecalled Ikea Antilop high chair is becoming an endangered species.

Did DT get it wrong before, when I said that Antilops made between 2006 and 2010 were being recalled for having ridiculously flimsy safety straps?

Because the Daily Mail says the EU recall covers all Ikea Antilops sold from 2006 through September 2011, over 1.2 million units. And now I go back to the CPSC's recall notice, and it says 0911, too. Am I hallucinating? Did they expand it? Or am I just wrong?

Ah, no. I am right, and the Daily Mail is wrong. Both the EU and US recall notices state:

Only production dates 0607-0911 (YYMM) from supplier # 17389 are included in this recall for repair of belt.

On the bright side [?!], I did learn that the EU's recall notices are distributed through the Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products, or RAPEX.

So not only are the recall notices buried in spreadsheets with useless titles like report 1 - 2012, the system is called RAPEX. I feel safer, how about you?

RAPEX: Keeping European Consumers Safe [europa.eu]
Previously: Ikea Antilop Recall! World's Greatest High Chair has World's Flimsiest Straps

Though he's mostly into Swedish pine and plywood lately, in the mid-to-late 2000's, Stockholm architect Daniel Franzen definitely had a laser-cut steel phase. One result is this awesome steel dollhouse inspired by the barn house he designed for Swedish house manufacturer Arvesund.

It's an edition of 100, and comes with magnet paper wallpaper, as well as digital templates for printing more. I wonder if you could use dry erase markers on it? Would that be cool, or a crumby, dusty disaster waiting to happen?

Laser-Cut Steel Dollhouse by Bunker Hill, ed. 100, EUR100 [bunkerhill.se via stork bites man]
"A doll's house made of sprayed tin, with its shape taken from Daniel Franzén's barn house." [arvesund.com]

Previous steel toy awesomeness, 2007: ArcheToys cars and such made from welded steel beams by Floris Hovers

In the early 1840s, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert studied etching under the tutelage of the Royal Portrait Painter Sir George Hayter. Among the subjects of the 87 plates the pair created were a few sketches of their children, including the above print of Princess Victoria crawling on the floor, playing with a ball of yarn, which may have been where she got the nickname Pussy:

The plates were etched at Windsor Castle and some proof impressions were pulled from a small press there. Occasionally, however, the plates were entrusted to a local printer called Brown who had instructions to return all impressions and plates to the Castle.

The Queen and Prince Albert never intended these very personal etchings to stray outside of a very tight circle of family and friends. However, in 1847, a local journalist called Jasper Tomsett Judge, who specialised in Royal reportage for the gossip hungry tourist trade, managed to acquire sixty unauthorised prints for £5 from a journeyman employee of Brown's called Middleton.

Intending to launch an exhibition in London with William Strange, Judge produced a catalogue of the prints which was intended for sale. The press releases in the newspapers advertising the event reached the attention of the Queen and Prince Albert who were clearly not amused. A wave of lawsuits and injunctions against Judge, Strange and Middleton quickly followed and the exhibition and catalogue were never to be.

As such, very few etchings by either Royal exist outside of the private collections at Windsor (who have a full set) and the British Museum (who were given a set by King George V). Examples are also owned by the Victoria & Albert Museum as well as small numbers in private hands.

I mention this because, though making little photoalbums is awesome, there's something kind of cool about the idea of making little etchings of your kid.

Lot 359: Queen Victoria, a group of six etchings, est. £1000-1500 [dominicwinter.co.uk]
Sketches [sic] by Queen Victoria that she didn't want seen revealed after 150 years [dailymail.co.uk, where most of the comments are about the Princess Royal's nickname. You stay classy, Daily Mail!]