Names matter less than you think The winner of the Eurovision song contest in Copenhagen yesterday was Austria’s Conchita Wurst, a bearded male drag queen, who sang “Rise like a phoenix†to bug (among others) homophobic Vladimir Putin.
Nationalist pol Vladimir Zhirinovsky told Russian State TV: “It’s the end of Europe. Fifty years ago the Soviet Army occupied Austria. We made a mistake in freeing Austria. We should have stayed.†Actually the Russian Copenhagen contest judges also voted for alto-soprano Conchita, a 25-yr-old Austrian cross-dresser born Thomas Neuwirth. Neuwirth says Conchita is a bearded Colombian lady and the singer gets not just the gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual vote but also that of people who like a joke.
You don’t want to be tagged with a name giving luck or blessing.
Yingluck Shinawatra has been deposed as prime minister in Thailand and banned from politics. Goodluck Jonathan is under extreme political pressure for his government’s failure to respond vigorously to the kidnapping by Boko Haram Muslim extremists of students at girl’s high school in Nigeria’s northeast province.
Having a blessing (Barak in Hebrew or Arabic) in your name doesn’t do much good either. Israeli ex-defense minister Ehud Barak failed to get a peace deal with Yassir Arafat at Camp David in 2000 during the Clinton Administration. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt at 86 was tried for murder and has seen his party banned from the presidential coming election. Barack Obama has low approval ratings despite having won a 2nd term and may not go down in history as a great president despite his Nobel.
I haven’t found any examples of people bearing bad luck or cursed names doing better.
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*Reuters gave a boost to Global Logistic Properties Ltd today calling Chinese operations of the Singapore warehouse and logistics firm the solution to “weak links†which are needed if China is to meet the explosive growth potential being cited for Alibaba in its Wall St. debut. That is probably more likely than a takeover bid for GBTZF by Warren Buffett. As much as $2.5 trillion will have to be invested in building and automating Chinese warehouse facilities over the next 15 years, and private equity groups are said to be interesting in investing. They may well line up alongside GBTZF, the most experienced developer before putting up staggering amounts of money to build 2.4 bn sq meters of new logistics sites—an area as large as the island of Taiwan, Reuters noted.
