MORE FROM HUFFPOST
MORE FROM HUFFPOST
world cup 2014
No, FIFA and the Olympics aren't stimulating the economy. I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't enjoy the events because of the injustice. I'm advising you that the framing of the events as a stimulant for positive tourism is misleading.
Technology is like any tool -- its impact depends on its application. I have immediate access to more information than Einstein had in his entire lifetime -- and yet, somehow I feel that if he were alive, he would advocate long stretches removed from the distraction of constant inundation.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
WHAT'S HAPPENING
This could be a chapter in Latin American history coming full circle in the worst possible way.
So much in American life these days doesn't work. But soccer does work -- magnificently. I am not looking forward to returning to dysfunction and snafu.
The massacre by the Germans wasn't just a loss but the slow and painful withering of the national phallus right before our eyes. This defeat, which heralded the death of soccer as the go-to guarantor of the Brazilian heteromasculinity needed for the nation to make sense of itself, was particularly perverse.
Germany's surge through the tournament -- undefeated in seven games with only a tie with Ghana marring its record -- wasn't a fluke, nor was it lucky. It was the result of 14-year rebuilding program that began in 2000 when soccer was at a low point in Germany's vaunted history.
