Whenever I write about soccer, I inevitably write about loyalty. Now, I know I’m treading on obvious territory: a childhood in Texas and over three years in Pittsburgh have taught me that all sports are territorial and arbitrary allegiance-based battles waged by two sides differentiated by what appears on their shield or banner, as well [...]

A man at a bar called me a “dirty spic” this weekend. Earlier this week, I was hanging out with some brown folk and a friend dropped in on us. “Who invited the white girl?” someone asked when my friend C went to go get herself a drink. Everyone at the table laughed. This weekend, [...]

Yesterday, after I spent a good twenty minutes looking up the stats of all the games between the US and Mexico (only to discover it’s all on Wikipedia fifteen minutes later –That’s what I get for using “primary sources” as opposed to “unreliable” Wikipedia), I thought I’d put the matter to rest. Then I stumbled [...]

What is the record of Mexico vs US the last 5 years? – Tom You have no idea how tedious this was to look up. I ended up at the Federacion Mexican de Futbol Ass. crawling through old stats. Unfortunately, Mexico doesn’t have the best record against the US in the last five years. Here’s [...]

Hi Adri…. first, I’d like to say hello. If you don’t remember who I am, next time I will try to introduce myself again. Anyway, the question is…. How can I explain to gringos that their national soccer team and league is nowhere near Mexico level of gameplay? The gringos are starting to claim they [...]

From the Rolling Stone Article, “How America Lost the War on Drugs” – The drug war, in the end, has been undone in no small part by the sweeping and inflexible nature of its own metaphor. At the beginning, in the days of Escobar, the campaign was a war as seen from the situation room, [...]

I’m a big fan of TLAs (my old boss at Enron Defense loved saying “TLA” all the time. He’d say something like “EBS and other TLAs.” The first day of work I stared at him until he finally explained: Three Letter Acronym. Clever! And so I use it now all the time). The CNF (Creative [...]