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World(ish) Cup

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The sport with 2 names    Whereas it is mostly known as football, in 2 of the 3 host nations of the World Cup, it is known as  soccer . The history of both terms predates English snobbery of the 1980s about the North American use of the term football. The best historic context is from Stefan Szymanski, Professor of Sports Management at the University of Michigan and former Professor of Economics and MBA Dean at Cass Business School, part of the University of London. One of the most pre-eminent sports economists took to researching the "strange" football versus soccer debate.        When the Football Association was founded in 1863 by Oxford graduates, football was perceived as a posh sport. It began as association football to differentiate it from another popular (and new) sport: rugby football . The emergence of the word soccer is potentially from Szymanski's theory that "soc" came from the middle of "association" with "er" added. While thi...
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The Artlessness of the Trumpian Deal

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In the beginning...         Towards the end of the Reaganomics era, The Art of the Deal revealed many details of Donald Trump, including an 11-step formula for business success. While the release party took place at Trump Tower, he started dabbling in national politics 2 months beforehand. A full-page advertisement in major newspapers in September 1987 laid into Washington for helping fund allies' defence spending.  " There's nothing wrong with America's Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can't cure." The "Draft Trump" movement was meant to be promotion for the book along with its political overtone/undertone.      Publishers Weekly called it a "boastful, boyishly disarming, thoroughly engaging personal history." Journalist John Tierney observed that Trump "appears to have ignored some of his own advice due to well-publicized problems with his banks." Some have seen him as having been a "poster child for the '...
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