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Top UK boys' names by year and ranking. 2016 @ #2 - Muhammad 2015 @ #1 - Muhammad 2014 @ #1 - Muhammad 2013 @ #28 - Muhammad 2012 @ #57 - Muhammad 2011 @ #35 - Muhammad https://www.babycentre.co.uk/p... [babycentre.co.uk]

Top UK boys' names by year and ranking.

2016 @ #2 - Muhammad
2015 @ #1 - Muhammad
2014 @ #1 - Muhammad
2013 @ #28 - Muhammad
2012 @ #57 - Muhammad
2011 @ #35 - Muhammad

https://www.babycentre.co.uk/p...

I'm not joking. Class is much more divisive than race (or gender, or age) in Britain today, and can be very difficult to escape/change -- especially if it's your name.

People my age (born in the 1980s) might have middle class names: William, George, Daniel, Ben, Charlotte, Helen, Lucy.
Or upper class (posh) names: Gregory, Oliver, Toby, Victoria, Mary
Or working class names: Ryan, Lee, Chelsea, Darren, Stacy, Kevin, Shane

Fashions change though. My mum says when she was a child my name was "posh", and she'd never have considered naming her son with it. But by the 1980s it was middle class, and not so common with upper class parents. By the 1990s it had a common short version, which my mum didn't like ("too lazy, I called you _________") and she refuses to use it. In the 2000s it's occasionally used by working class people. You can sometimes tell class by the choice of Benjamin/Ben/Benny, Alexander/Alex/(n-a), Katherine/Kate/Katie, Jonathan/John/Jonny/Nathan -- especially if someone introduces themselves as the first or last of those.

The woman in the story is Chelsea. Stereotypically, she's named after the famous football club (according to dad) and the exclusive area of London (according to mum). The man is Lee, which is simply too short and sounds too much like an American wrestler (sorry!) to be a "nice" name.

Brooklyn Beckham is a celebrity example of a working class boy with a working class name. And yes, Brooklyn Beckham may have a really rich mum and dad, but in British eyes he's still working class, because dad's a football player, and mum was a pop singer. Forgetting that he lives in the USA, if Brooklyn's parents want him to be considered middle class they should encourage him academically (starting by reading with him) so that when he's 12 he can get in to a private (costs money) school. Learning a classical instrument will help, and reading books in his spare time, and taking family holidays to a quieter beach, or the wilderness/countryside, or a historic town.
Money is much less important than aspiration, inclination, and other peoples' perceptions. A cheap camping holiday in the British countryside is middle class, a caravan holiday (anywhere) is working class, so is going to a big party resort in Thailand, or Disneyland Florida.

Earlier this year someone introduced herself to me as "Caitlin. Oh, I'm named after my great aunt, she's Irish-American." See that on Wiki there's only one famous Brit with this name, yet it's quite common. This girl didn't want to be mistaken as lower class by her name -- although I didn't need the hint: she was a goth, liked metal music, had long hair, a "BBC" accent, could play the piano, went to a girls-only private school, had done well at her exams, was going to study art at university, had an old BlackBerry phone from her dad, etc etc. (Since I knew at least some of this before I knew her name, when she said Caitlin I probably looked surprised, hence her explanation.)

The class system is awful, since its the root of so many prejudices and barriers, but even though I'm aware of it I often find it difficult to ignore it. Big parts of my identity are linked to it, from the way I dress to what or where I eat, from where I choose to live to the kind of pub I go to, and since I obviously spend most of my time with people with similar tastes, it's reinforced by the things around me.

I'm reading a book called Watching the English, which should answer any further questions, such as the kind of garden you can expect a lower, middle and upper class person to have. (L: Neat and ordered, with the soil showing around the lines of plants. M: Messy, with big plants growing together, no soil visible. U: A combination, depending on whether the lower class gardener or the no-need-to-work housewife did that part.)

A woman gets one or two periods, and then she's pregnant.

Depending if she is having sex or not.

Breastfeeding suppresses the menstrual cycle. The woman can almost certainly go 3 months without a period, and stands a decent chance of going 18 months or more.

Fixed that for you. Found a site here: http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/youafterthebirth/startingperiodsq/. My wife had here period after less then two months after giving birth

The guy is going to look like a real froot-loop.

I've seen about a hundred posts arguing about why or why not the research is something that is equivalent to killing babies, and as many arguing the federal research ban only stops institutions asking for money for the research...

First, to get it out of the way, the "ban" is not a law against research, but a funding rule that is implemented such that any facility receiving federal dollars (every public hospital, college, research center, ~99.9% of the US research facilities) is barred from conducting the research on new lines. If you get federal dollars for anything at the facility, you can't do the research, period.


Now, the type of stem-cell research being debated uses discarded eggs from In-Vitro Fertilization. Regarding the radical right religious regime's belief that a Day 5 blastocyst is a person, complete with a soul, etc... Sure, if they want to 'believe' this, they can. The problem arises when they try to selectively (read: politically) apply laws to support their religious beliefs.

Apparently, many people (including a bunch of folks here on /.) believe that stem-cell research is a crime because babies get killed in the process. Here's a news-flash, as part of any IVF cycle, there are some fertilized eggs that are implanted, and some that are not. The extras are either put into cryo, or more often simply destroyed. (Some of those are donated to test the nutrient medium that's used - basically if they don't survive, that batch of medium is bad, if they do survive they are discarded). To give you an example, during an IVF cycle, there might be 17 eggs retrieved, of them 16 fertilize, of them 12 make it to day 3, then of them only 2-3 are implanted (the other 9-10 go to Day-5 then get destroyed). Instead of being forced to destroy them, people should have the freedom to donate them to stem-cell research if their beliefs allow.

So, shouldn't the radical right religious regime be even more adamantly against IVF ? While a handful of cells used in research seems to get them in a panic, they ignore the simple fact that thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed every month as part of normal IVF treatments. Why aren't they calling for the elimination of fertility clinics ? Are these couples who pursue IVF mass-murderers ?

Where's the logic here ? If stem-cell research should be banned because allowing a Day-5 blast to arrest is killing a baby, why do they not have any issue with, or even debate over the actual IVF treatments where the stem-cells for this research are obtained ?

To me, there is no logic, it's just politics, plain and simple. The radicals pushing for the "ban" don't really respect life so much, they do respect power and influence and seem to want to use it to force themselves on others.


p.s. If you have questions or want more facts on IVF, please feel free to ask me and I'll try to point you to some answers.

I've seen about a hundred posts arguing about why or why not the research is something that is equivalent to killing babies, and as many arguing the federal research ban only stops institutions asking for money for the research...

First, to get it out of the way, the "ban" is not a law against research, but a funding rule that is implemented such that any facility receiving federal dollars (every public hospital, college, reasearch center, ~99.9% of the US research facilities) is barred from conducting the research on new lines. If you get federal dollars for anything at the facility, you can't do the research, period.


Now, the type of stem-cell reseach being debated uses discarded eggs from In-Vitro Fertilization. Regarding the radical right religious regime's belief that a Day 5 blastocyst is a person, complete with a soul, etc... Sure, if they want to 'believe' this, they can. The problem arises when they try to selectively (read: politically) apply laws to support their religious beliefs.

Apparently, many people (including a bunch of folks here on /.) believe that stem-cell research is a crime because babies get killed in the process. Here's a news-flash, as part of any IVF cycle, there are some fertilized eggs that are implanted, and some that are not. The extras are either put into cryo, or more often simply destroyed. (Some of those are donated to test the nutrient medium that's used - basically if they don't survive, that batch of medium is bad, if they do survive they are discarded anyway). To give you an example, during an IVF cycle, there might be 17 eggs retrieved, of them 16 fertilize, of them 12 make it to day 3, then of them only 2-3 are implanted (the other 9-10 go to Day-5 then get destroyed). Instead of being forced to destroy them, people should have the freedom to donate them to stem-cell research if their beliefs allow.

So, shouldn't the radical right religious regime be even more adamantly against IVF ? While a handful of cells used in research seems to get them in a panic, they ignore the simple fact that thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed every month as part of normal IVF treatments. Why aren't they calling for the elimination of fertility clinics ? Are these couples who pursue IVF mass-murders ?

Where's the logic here ? If stem-cell research should be banned because allowing a Day-5 blast to arrest is killing a baby, why do they not have any issue with, or even debate over the effects of the IVF treatments where the stem-cells for this research are obtained ?

Personally, I don't feel that men and women have different brains. I'd rather think that it was social conditioning, but there is a valid reason for this post. My problem is that the following statements yours make little sense to me when put together.

It is a fact that men and women's brains have evolved differently over the ages.

And:

We simply do not know enough about the brain to speculate at this point whether on average one brain is more optimized to certain types of tasks than another, although evidence would support this (women's communications centres are larger, men's spatial-relationship centres are larger).

If we dont know enough about the layout, how can we claim the male and female layout is different as fact? Anyway...

What is so different between two people, one having two X chromosones and the other having one X and one Y? Does anyone know if there are genes on the Y chromosome that cause such an evolutionary divergence? I have been lead to believe through my reading on human development that this is not the case.

How can we claim that our habits and worldly likes are genetically controlled when (as far as I know) a baby learns to smile? Some stuff must be hardwired, like breating, heart control and the like... But I can't see how our preferences in what we like to do can be so simple.

Of course, I am an engineer. I am not a biologist, phycologist, brain surgeon or a good speller. :)

Except that age does have an effect on fertility. And the ends of the chromosomes are called telomeres.