I will never become Americanized enough to understand the US obsession with sports. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed a good game of soccer or hockey both on TV and live. What I don’t get, though, is why sports need to invade every aspect of human existence in this country. Athletic programs of US colleges end up being a huge rip-off no matter what they do:

Syracuse University has decided to leave the Big East Conference for the Atlantic Coast Conference, which has large payout for members. But Syracuse is bound by its contract with the Big East to pay a $7.5 million exit fee. The university is planning to allocate that bill across the institution.

So now every department will suffer because the Athletic Department wants to get more money but refuses to invest anything into the program.

But The Syracuse Post-Standard reported that both student and faculty groups are asking why the athletics department shouldn’t pay the $7.5 million, and spare other departments cuts. A petition says: “In light of the fact that the Athletic Department is expected to receive an annual increase from the ACC in excess of $10 million per year, we endorse the resolution of the University Senate and Senate Budget Committee recommending that the $7.5 million Big East exit fee be paid fully by the Athletic Department and not out of student tuition.”

Can you believe these losers at the Athletic Department? They want to get all the benefits but pay for none of the costs of this arrangement. And what is even more egregious, the administration seems to be supporting them. I wonder why I never see departments of Foreign Languages or Anthropology demand that the entire university invest millions of dollars into something that will benefit them.

I might be naive but I will never understand why, instead of all these fake Conferences with enormous amounts of money and athletes who are barely literate but pretend to be students, universities can’t have big, beautiful facilities where people come to practice sports without all of these official, pompous, billion-dollar issues.

One of the most curious games identified by Berne is called “Debtor.” Berne said back in 1969 that the need to take on debt purely for its own sake was the defining characteristic of the American identity.

The reason why people take on all these mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, personal credit lines, etc. is not about what they purchase with the borrowed money. Just like alcoholics, they don’t look for gain as much as they crave the pain. The debt organizes their entire existence and charts their life path for them. Everything they do, the way they structure their career and their personal life, even the way they manage their time is circumscribed by the debt. If the debt weren’t there, they would have to write the script of their own lives, and that is too onerous.

The debt also provides motivation in lieu of a broken mechanism of motivation (again, just like the hangover does for alcoholics) and fosters a pleasant feeling of endless guilt.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive at first, but look at any person who can’t stop spending and taking out credit cards. How often does s/he buy completely useless junk that s/he doesn’t even remember buying two days later? Isn’t this an indication that the purchase is unimportant here?

A Philadelphia mother wants her son’s high school teacher fired after he bought the teen the novelFifty Shades of Grey for in-class reading.

Maya Ladson says she was shocked to find a copy of the racy read in her 14-year-old’s book bag back on March 9. That shock turned to outrage when she found out how he got the book.

The really disturbing question here is what the mother was doing rummaging through the 14-year-old’s bag. No book, movie or pornographic material of absolutely any kind can cause as much damage as an intrusive parent who denies the child personal space and rummages through his or her personal stuff.

What’s really horrible is that this vicious freakazoid doesn’t even feel any shame when she announces to the world how easily she violates her son’s privacy:

The school has been on break for the past month. Ladson says when classes resume on Monday, she plans to protest outside the school with other parents.

And now she will make her son the butt of every joke at school. We all know how teenagers react to 14-year-old boys whose Mommies make a public spectacle of  policing their sexuality.

I’m sure this freak is convinced she is a great mother.