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Sports Illustrated recently launched a new fantasy baseball game. It complements their existing fantasy baseball game, I suppose. It’s called Baseball Challenge: Salary Cap Challenge.

Yep. It’s a fantasy baseball game that sells itself with the salary cap. As a Celtics fan laboring under the emotional weight of the Vin Baker trade, I find this painfully depressing. It doesn’t look like it’s really that different than any other fantasy baseball game — salary caps are nothing new in that world — but did they have to sell it as the “Cripple Your Team For Years With One Stupid Guaranteed Contract Challenge”? (Rephrasing mine.)

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WISH 55 asks about names:

How do you choose character names? What makes a good or bad name for a character? What are three examples of really good (or really bad) character names, and why are they so good or bad?

I just kick names around until they feel right. I tend to use baby name books and sources often, thanks to Gretchen’s pernicious influence. I have an archived copy of the Onomastikon which has been very useful for culturally appropriate names. I don’t think my names are ever particularly stellar, but they work.

Examples. Um. I’m still fond of Paul/Emoticon. Paul made the fatal mistake of allowing American reporters to coin a superhero name for him, and as he’s French he didn’t realize how lame a name Emoticon was. (His power was projective empathy, which manifested as glyphs in the air in front of him.) He was always a little annoyed about that, although he refused to show it.

Daevros was a great character with a lousy name. What can I say? I’m not a Dr. Who fan, so I didn’t realize.

Oh, I guess I can admit to the source for Reese Beulay’s last name as my third example. I like David Bowie a lot, and I found the contrast between the song and the concept of backwoods redneck mystics to be amusing.