I don’t mean to sound bitter, but I am. Not just because the Packers aren’t going back to the Super Bowl. Not just because I called both Conference Championships wrong last week. No, my bitterness is more complex, and of longer standing. For as we look past the Pro Bowl to the Super Bowl, I see a less-than-thrilling finale to what started out as an odd, exciting season in the NFL.
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. While “interesting” is diluted and obscured to the point of redundancy, “epic” continues to diminish in stature. Meanwhile, “unexpected” lurks in quiet inescapability. Amid all the hyperbole, it was the unexpected that caused us to pause for thought this week.
Continue ReadingLiberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and the socially destructive force of increasing inequality.
History is an imperfect science—the truth often weaves within nuance and mystery. For those playing the role of historian, the trick is knowing what you’re looking for.
Today is the seventh installment in our series with Explodingdog. Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments.
A grocery visit or dinner out in Israel can sometimes leave your stomach churning, but not for the reasons you might think.
In Thomas Woodruff’s paintings, Hippocrates’s Four Humors afflict beasties, batterflies, and tigers on tender, spooky landscapes.
It could have been the ghost of Brett Favre. Or Aaron Rodgers’s two-week vacation. Maybe those State Farm “discount double-check” commercials produce bad karma in addition to vague irritation. Or maybe this girl is right, and the Packers would have won if only her friend hadn’t talked her into putting sparkles on her green nail polish.
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, despite all that Wikipedia has achieved, quantity and brute force wasn’t fairing well, with soft power and quality winning the long war.
China loves soccer, but its complete lack of ability has a root cause: the system:
Continue ReadingIn a country so proud of its global stature, football is a painful national joke. Perhaps because Chinese fans love the sport madly and want desperately for their nation to succeed at it, football is the common reference point by which people understand and measure failure.
World War II had veteran parades. Vietnam War vets were often ignored, if not shunned. For the current generation of war-weary Americans, solace comes on YouTube.
Today is the sixth installment in our series with Explodingdog. Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments.
Our man in Boston sits down for the sixth time with Russell Banks to discuss his latest novel, the movie business, Mitt Romney, the emigration of investigative journalists, and why it’s wise to wait until your 70’s before writing about obsessive love.
Every Friday we take a look back at the week’s headlines, centering on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. This week, when we weren’t trying to find ourselves, we were just getting lost; psychologists were having a field day. The words of Kevin Fanning came to mind, “Sometimes you try to be in the moment, but the moment sucks, and you think back to another moment, which also sucked, but had a twist ending.”
Continue ReadingDepending on whom you ask, the notion that some cultures have their own ways of going crazy is either the ultimate in cultural sensitivity or the ultimate in Western condescension.
Football fans learned some important lessons this weekend; first among them: Ben Roethlisberger cannot pull off a fedora. His post-game presser outfit—whether an homage to Swingers or an attempt to bring (consensual) sexy back—only added insult to an already deeply injured Steeler Nation.
It is time to announce the contestants, judges, and brackets for the original, one-and-only, full-combat, oddly-predictive-of-the-Pulitzer-Prize, eighth annual TMN Tournament of Books, coming March 2012, presented by Field Notes.
The most irritating thing cyclists do? Wear their helmets indoors, of course. A few years ago I wrote about the folks who shopped for groceries with their helmets on (“What, you’re going to crash into the tomatoes?!”). A friend who had read my essay came over for dinner one evening and began to chop vegetables at our sink, with his helmet on. Ha ha. I was uncorking a bottle of wine, so I wadded up the metal foil top and threw it at my friend’s head/helmet.
On a quest to find the person who speaks the most languages on Earth, our correspondent encountered Emil Krebs, a German diplomat who knew, by some accounts, 65 of them—and happily swore in dozens.
Today is the fifth installment in our series with Explodingdog. Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments.
In Jeroen Hofman’s new monograph Playground, the training facilities for Holland’s soldiers, firefighters, rescue workers, and police officers are photographed from a cherry-picker, turning dangerous scenarios into LEGO sets.
