Nerve Endings Firing Away

"Reading David McCullough’s 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?

The answer surprised me."

"The Android ecosystem doesn’t seem capable of producing devices that are great on day one. Yet Apple consistently pulls it off." The promise of "It'll only get better" leaves us with an unfulfilled promise of today.

"I realize this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but this isn’t even good satire, nothing but a mailed-in rehash of decades-old anti-soccer talking points.  Of course, if he actually knew a damn thing about soccer as it’s actually played, he’d have little choice but to conclude that it is the most capitalistic sport known to man, if for some reason you think that sports can actually be classified on the political spectrum, which is itself idiotic.*"

"The suspicion in soccer circles is that the American game is played too much in comfortable suburban leagues, and not enough in the streets. A great American star is out there somewhere, in a neighborhood blackening with soot, playing from one crack in the sidewalk to another, but he's dribbling a basketball. The pick-up game is essential to mastery of any sport; it's how kids come to create new moves and make them their own, how they learn to create and aspire and imagine. Instead we're cultivating players in little leagues overmanaged by adults handing out juice boxes."

"Cheating and breaking the rules of the game (and there is a subtle distinction between the two) are as old as the game itself, and one doesn’t have to support the actions of Suarez to understand that, in football, these things happen and that they are part and parcel of the game. It may even be part of the appeal of the game, that human frailty (physical, psychological and moral) plays such a part in it. Those bringing up the notion of changing the laws of the game should be careful of what they wish for."