Welcome (Back)

Let’s call this Take 2.

As you can see below, I suffered a total meltdown right around tax time in 2006. A number of things came together - most of them related fairly specifically to writing about politics - that led me to believe that blogging was a complete waste of my time. And, on a number of levels, I still believe that to be the case. That assumption, however, turns on the idea that the approach I took to blogging was the only one; obviously, it isn’t and it was silly to think so.

The more specific problem came with trying to continually churn out carefully researched and argued content at a clip sufficient to build an audience. In the end, trying to sustain a one-man blog drove me crazy. I found the process exhausting and gained little satisfaction in producing scores of well-intentioned, yet very sloppy, first-drafts. Another part of this, which was hinted at in the final, farewell post, was that the blogosphere actually prefers partisan red-meat, a kind of content I generally find both pointless and not a little dishonest.

So, what will people see and read here?

Ideally, the best stuff I produce won’t appear here, but will show up instead in other outlets. My long-term plan involves using this space as a central databank for whatever I can get other people to publish. Who knows? Maybe someone will pay me for content some day and I won’t be able to do that, but, until that happens, I’ll link to everything I can. Between here and there, though, my intention is to do what Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds does: share items from other people and other outlets that seem useful or educational, something I call “book-club” blogging. This will include both political stuff and soccer-related posts. In general, I’ll add only brief commentary to both subjects and leave it at that. I have to confess I’ve had a hell of a time with this in the past, but will try again.

In the near-term, I also intend to produce something a pair of weekly columns - one on soccer the other on history, politics, or something else - mainly to keep the researching and writing parts of my brain limber and to generally warm up to blogging again. Depending on what I’m doing, I expect there will be times when I’m only doing “book-club” blogging - and that’s totally swell by me. In the end, I have no great aspirations to build traffic for this site. It’s intended as more of a writing portfolio at this point - which is, as I see it, a better purpose for a blog than trying to explain the world on a daily basis.

All in all, I hope I enjoy this second attempt and that visitors to the site enjoy it too. (Actually, counting Angry Daydream (RIP), Bunco Parade (RIP), and It’s a Simple Game, which has just been coopted to this site, that makes this the fifth attempt....but who’s counting, right?).

Plato on the New Corporate Paradigm

"And he will be most likely to love that which he regards as having the same interests with himself, and that of which the good or evil fortune is supposed by him at any time most to affect his own?"
Plato, The Republic, Book III, damn long time ago

That's a fairly simplistic stab at the argument as to what ails the current culture milieu between individuals, the state, and the increasingly rootless corporations that employ so many of the individuals within that state. With no shared interests with their "host communities" and having the health of its internal culture and profitability as its utmost goal, any pretense to reciprocity between corporations and the nation-state in which they operate has dissolved and somewhat naturally at that.

The point here isn't that this is inherently evil. It is, however, problematic and it's a reality to which government, at all levels, hasn't yet adjusted to.

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Week 27 MLS Previews

My previews for Major League Soccer's Week 27 are already up on ArmchairGM. Looking back on what I wrote, one mystery remains: namely, my hostility to this weekend's game line-up, especially the televised game. I can't explain it...I only wish someone thought to air the "SuperClassico" instead of the Houston Dynamo hosting DC United.

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Chicago Takes the Cup: What People Are Saying

It’s hard to hit a domestic soccer site today without bumping into some mention of last night’s U.S. Open Cup final, which the Chicago Fire won by topping the Los Angeles Galaxy by a score of 3-1. I have to confess, as I did in my post-game wrap, that I caught only the second half. All in all, I liked what I saw: a good, hard-fought game and not a bad one either. Another positive, albeit a curious one, came with the size of the crowd: only 8,851 showed up. Small as it was it looked bigger and sounded bigger still - another good thing.

With my wrap-up linked to above, I thought I’d pull together a tour of other Open Cup commentary because there’s plenty of it out there, starting with the 17 sources available through Topix.net’s aggregator. But the best stuff comes from some of the more prominent pundits.

Marc Connolly, writing for USSoccerplayers.com, credits Chicago for taking the Open Cup in general as seriously as any Major League Soccer team ever has; implicit in that notion is the idea they deserved to win, though he gives LA their propers too. And there’s something to that as well: either Los Angeles of Chicago, and now both, have been in every Open Cup final since 2000. One can also include Connolly among those mightily impressed with Tony Sanneh’s assist on the third, “nail-in-coffin” goal, which was scored by Thiago; count me among them too - the precision on that pass was what fans pay to see.

The pick of the bunch, though, comes from Jeff Carlisle on ESPN’s site. While the larger service of his column grows from the way he uses the Open Cup win to explain why Chicago are legitimate contenders for MLS Cup, I like that he singles out the play of Justin Mapp, both in this game and in the season in general, for admiration. Mapp is growing into a better player, which is good news not only for Chicago, but for the U.S. men’s team; even if Mapp never makes the squad, he forces the left-sided players that do make the squad to raise their game or keep checking their shoulder.

Finally, another article raised a neat point of curiosity:

“Thiago sealed the win for the Fire in the 88th minute on a Tony Sanneh pass, ensuring Chicago became only the fifth team to win the title four times.”

That kicked off a search for the identity of the other four teams. That in turn led to a Wikipedia entry and the possibility that the phrasing on this historical morsel isn’t the most helpful or accurate. Wiki's entry shows three teams that have one the Open Cup title five times in the tournament's 83-year history: Bethlehem Steel FC, Maccabee SC, and Fall River FC. Along with Chicago, another two teams have lifted the trophy four times: Greek-America AA of New York and Ukranian Nationals of Philadelphia. Apart from counting six teams with four titles, three of those teams have more than four titles. Am I being nit-picky? Yeah....

Still, good game and good win for Chicago. A number of people ought to be checking their shoulders on their way into the playoffs.

MLS Going Int'l?

Frank Dell'Appa, writing for ESPN's site had Colorado Rapids head coach Fernando Clavijo serve as his mouthpiece to argue for changing Major League Soccer's schedule to sync up with the international calendar. The nut of the argument comes here:

"The idea is to place more importance on regular-season games; place MLS teams in a position to compete in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, Copa Libertadores, Copa Sudamericana, and the proposed Interliga with Mexican clubs; and also to set things up for players to transfer in and out of the MLS easier."

For what it's worth, I'm all for it. And I'm willing to freeze my ass off in some random stadium (at least when either MLS gets a team in the Pacific Northwest or when I get rich...let's hold it for the latter) to prove it.

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Slate on Brilliant Drug Ads

TESTING: Let's see if the categories work, yes.

Spend enough time in front of the TV these days and you may notice a change in the government's anti-drug ads. As they noted over on Slate it appears that the government finally got it right. Taking drugs doesn't inevitably lead to madness and murder. In fact, with many drugs - marijuana, in particular - precisely the opposite will happen: nothing. Marijuana allows one to sit through damn near anything and for twice as long.

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