Absolutely. All the right-wing political shit he spews is from some deep-rooted religious belief that God wants the world to be that way. Ted Cruz believes (actually he knows with 110% certainty) God wants the world to be a libertarian theocracy. At least the other GOP candidate dipshits know it's just the party line…

George Will looks like Owen Labrie’s grandfather. Just sayin’.

Next year's North London Derby: "The epic battle to decide who will be 3rd and 4th in the Premier League. You don't want to miss it!"

There’s an accent at the end, so it's pronounced rah-pay.

This particular atrocity shouldn’t be directly tied to the Olympics. This stuff was happening long before the 88 games were even in the planning stages. It is part of a broader pattern of authoritarian rule by the government. These kids weren’t rounded up because of the 88 games. Park was “purifying” the nation as…

This story is just one example of what went down under the military dictatorships in S. Korea. Koreans can rattle off a long list of horrors that were only revealed fully in the years after the Olympics. Forced labor and “re-education” camps to punish and “purify” criminals and political prisoners, routinized torture…

Park Geun-hye’s election was like a referendum on the Park legacy. Park Geun-hye is perceived to be a dolt who is just a vehicle for “conservative” elements and interests to push their agenda (so echoes of W). She is also somewhat Trumpian in that she digs in and doubles down on scandals/gaffes and does not really…

That’s being driven by national pride (“we got rich while other countries stayed poor”), historical revisionism (“military dictatorship wasn’t so bad and better than chaos”) and censorship. Many older Koreans look back favorably on those years because censorship kept them ignorant of the government’s abuses. My…

If you were really former military, you’d know valor and bravery are not synonymous with victory (esp. when the odds are totally in your favor).

People getting married for the wrong reasons (or based on immaturity) is not a new phenomenon. As in it’s probably been going on since the invention of monogamy. In ye olden times, before divorce was no longer on par with murder in terms of social stigma, people got married too young, because that’s what people did…

So weird. Rayo is historically one of the most leftist clubs in Europe and Oklahoma is arguably the most right-wing place in America (in a highly competitive field). Was the glaring cognitive dissonance of this intended? Like Malmo FF in Sweden I guess. Do they have like 5 fans in the stands?

Let me add a slice of the suburban soccer dad perspective to this discussion. I’ve been a serious football fan for 15 years, a dad for 7, and involved with youth soccer for 3 (i.e., helped coach my kid’s teams). Through our local youth soccer organization, I’ve gotten insights into the “structure” in the U.S., esp.…

Really? “Warm Glow Altruists” and “Effective Altruists?” This is what passes for the work product of academics these days? What’s next, a think piece about how pandemics are good for the human species by examining anti-vaccination loons dubbed “Warm Glow Disease-Spreaders” and bio-terrorists as “Effective…

It’s the lasting legacy of “disrupt/hack” marketing and the Ted talks. Intellectually soft academics who work on “pop psychology” (dutifully and earnestly covered by Shankar Vedantam on NPR) topics have embraced the “disrupt” marketing ploy to package their ideas in ways that will get them noticed. Giving a summary…

This is about the NFL trying to avoid getting sued down the road. That's all it is. The NFL looks out for nobody but the NFL.

It's all peace and love until a coordinated team of Roma women try to jack you, as they did to me, on the Rome subway. The Roma pickpockets have taken their craft and made it into a fine art. The casual indifference of the locals is what shocks me more. Rampant petty crime in Europe seems to be tolerated because the…

You probably need to go look at some more National Geographics to get a better sense of what “tribesman” look like. “Fat” people are everywhere. It’s just that lots of other people are either genetically predisposed to gain less weight as they age, deliberately limit their calories, or are just simply unable to afford…

Mainstream, top of the rankings schools will roll over for the feds at the first real threat of sanctions, or loss of funding. The Dept of Educ. could be doing far more on this to bring these schools to heel and in compliance, but then alums of these schools litter the bureaucracy and halls of DC power. So while this…

Apropos of nothing, but the Guardian article below rubbishes the Man U squad for being outclassed by a Liverpool squad that has been on the rise but so far not deemed "top 4." Contrast that to the fawning write-ups here of Arsenal as a title contender, right to the moment it lost to Man U. The same Man U that looked…

The advent of democracy and more stable food supplies has “fattened” up a lot of societies. It’s called human progress. So what is “normal” anyway? Is it what people were when most of the populace was ruled by monarchs and nobles, worked the fields like slaves, were fed the scraps, and basically died by the age of 50?…