July 2014
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I'm reading Middlemarch again. It's either my fourth or fifth time through the best novel ever written in the English language. If you want to know about the nineteenth century, start with George Eliot. I had the oddest feelings fifty pages in. (Actually, "pages" is an anachronism because I am reading on the kindle.) Lydgate is flirting with beautiful, empty-headed…
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Netherlands-Argentina was exciting and rather beautiful until it went to penalty kicks. What a foolish way to find a winner! It's as if, in basketball, tie games led to a foul-shooting contest, or if, in baseball, instead of extra innings they started hitting fungoes for distance. Soccer travesties itself by resorting to penalty kicks. A better solution: play…