What's in a name?

Jonathan Lansner has an interesting column in today's Reg on how the meltdown of Irvine's subprime mortgage monolith, New Century Financial (here's yesterday's New Century bad news, and here's today's fresh New Century bad news), is effecting other financial institutions with similar names. There are unrelated banks named New Century in Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. The Irvine-based stench of failure has wafted over all of them, but so far it's only caused embarrassment and the urgent need to explain to customers that they have nothing to do with New Century Financial.

And so we are reminded that just because the name's the same, it doesn't mean that any other characteristic is shared. Something to keep in mind if you read this Capitol Weekly story on the split between the California Medical Association and the California Association of Physician Groups over physician assisted suicide. Especially when you get to the seventh paragraph, and learn that the president of the California Medical Association is Dr. Frankenstein.

Really.

Dr. Frankenstein.

He must have a helluva reassuring bedside manner to overcome a name like that.