Category: Science

I’m not yet sure whether it’s uber-geeky or just clever-clever, but the “people” web page for the Pines Lab at Berkeley, that’s Alex Pines, in case you didn’t know, divides up past and present team members into “Current Pine Nuts”, “Old Pine Nuts”, and “All Nuts”. There are also Global Pinenuts, presumably those Pines lab members who have fallen far from the tree.

Just be thankful, Professor Dogg at MIT hasn’t had a similar idea…or worse still Hadley Cocks at Duke!

Pines lab people can be found here

TL:DR – This article from 2005 warns readers not to indulge in pornstarname memes that might expose their password secrets, such as mother’s maiden name, first pet, and other such personal information.

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Porn star names seem to be the modern trendy equivalent of star signs. People at parties ask you what your porn star name might be, and others have a useful little formula for generating them. First name comes from the name of your first pet, say. Lucky. And, the last name, your mother’s maiden name. Cocker. Hence my PSN might be Lucky Cocker. My wife’s is Goldie Black…

It’s fun and seemingly harmless. But, watch out for websites that offer to generate a PSN for you…typing in your pet’s name and mother’s maiden name might seem innocuous enough, but remember that very information usually forms the basis of the security checks for your online banking too…

Incidentally, my pet wasn’t called Lucky and my mother certainly wasn’t a Cocker. I’m not that stupid, it’s Snowy and Hedgecock.

UPDATE: It turns out I needn’t have bothered coming up with a porn star name for myself, apparently there is a David Bradley porn star out there somewhere as it is. Check out this Sig Figs post for photos of several other people with the name David Bradley (but not the pr0n star, I hasten to add).

UPDATE: A self-styled Wikileaks for porn has revealed the real names of dozens of porn stars who use stage names (industry pseudonyms). The Independent reports that, “The ability of those pornographic film performers to hide their identity behind sometimes bizarre stage monikers has been shot to pieces after a website published a leaked database containing the real names, dates of birth, and official nicknames of more than 15,000 of the adult industry’s hard-working performers, past and present.”

Google really is rather clever, isn’t it. As a jape I used the “word”, umberleevabull in a chat to a friend. Try a search on that word and Google recognises that you really meant unbelievable: Google Search: umberleevabull.

Unburleaverbull!

(Doesn’t recognise that one though, hah!)

Footnote: Actually, it now does recognize that last spelling and once again suggests Unbelievable. I presume they have some sort of algo in place that automatically updates the database when someone uses the misspelled word and lets Google correct them. Very, very clever.