In Brazil, crowds of people feel “humiliated and ashamed” as a result of the 1:7 loss to Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. TV programs and newspapers offer advice from psychologists on to how to avoid letting the trauma of the loss cause depression.

The very idea that people would have such intense emotions linked to how well a group of complete strangers rolled a ball across a field many miles away is extremely bizarre. Especially if we remember how historically recent the emergence of such feelings is.

Winifred is a beautiful name that should make a comeback.

Are there any names you feel have been unfairly consigned to oblivion?

Putin met with the leaders of the Jewish community and informed them that Joseph Goebbels was a talented man who always achieved his goals.

Of course, I will now hear that Ukrainians kidnapped Putin’s puppy and forced him to say this to discredit Russia and win the propaganda war.

Goebbels achieved many of his goals but not all, as evidenced by the existence of Jews who had to listen to this speech of Putin’s.

“Haven’t all the Russian Jews emigrated?” N asked.

“Well, apparently ‘a stupid Jew’ is not as much of an oxymoron as we thought,” I said.

P.S. I have the video where Putin says this, in case anybody is doubting, but it’s obviously in Russian.

Unemployment in Spain is terrifyingly high. However, we need to remember that it stood at the numbers that, for us, would mean the end of the world even at the height of Spain’s prosperity. Before the recession, Spain’s economy rarely went much lower than 20%. And nobody seemed to care a whole lot.

The reason for this phenomenon is that firing a worker was so extraordinarily difficult that nobody wanted to hire at all. The best people could hope for were temporary and part-time positions. And the strong welfare state + the permissive credit system supplemented the rest.

I hope I don’t have to tell you how enormously problematic this system of temping and part-timing without a hope for full-scale employment is.

Ukraine’s new President Petro Poroshenko (formerly a billionaire chocolate maker) is creating a new cabinet and placing in the ministerial positions people who

a) never held any governmental appointments before;

b) don’t belong to any political parties;

c) have created businesses worth millions or even billions.

This is a very curious experiment.

Do respectable journals actually use Google Translate? See the following excerpt from a scholarly article:

Obviously, “highest rent” here stands for the highest income. But the careless translation changes the meaning of the article completely. People might come away from it thinking that in Spain those who rent live the high lifestyle of the rich and mighty.

The same article keeps referring to the middle-class and the working class as “popular classes”, which is another annoying calque from Spanish.

It’s not about whether the European welfare state model is or isn’t sustainable, as the President of the European Central Bank and Spain’s Mariano Rajoy (as well as a crowd of others) keep saying. It is, rather, that there is no more reason to sustain it.

Of course, they can’t say this openly, so they keep inventing stories about how the model all of a sudden became unsustainable. The reality, however, is that if there existed a political will to sustain – and even augment – the model, it could and would be done.

“Today we are going to talk about sex problems,” Dr Phil says. “And here is the expert who will help us. She knows all about it because she’s an OB-GYN.”

In the meanwhile, every – and I mean every single one – article that mentions the word “sex” hastens to add that “we are a sex-obsessed country.” Obviously, this delusional belief allows people to avoid discussing the deeply unpleasant, to them, subject of sex and avoid knowing even the most basic facts about sexual health.

I’m collecting idiotic titles of useless bureaucrats in academia who mooch off students and faculty members. Here is one I just found: “Alcohol Educator/Behavioral Incident Counselor.”

Of course, it would be even cooler to have a separate “alcohol educator” for every type of alcoholic beverage in existence but for now we will have to make do with a single one for all kinds of alcohol. 

I have to say, I’m glad Germany trounced Brazil like it did. Obvious favorites annoy me and, besides, if a Spanish-speaking country is not playing, then I will root for Europe.