world cup

Apropos of Paraguay's victory in this morning's world cup match against Slovakia, here's a photo I took almost 15 years ago: This is a local match in the Paraguayan community where I lived as a Peace Corps volunteer. Our team, from Colonia 11 de Setiembre, beat Ype Jhu 2-1. But that's not why I'm sharing the picture. Do you see all that dirt mounded up in the foreground? That's a mature nest of Atta sexdens, a leafcutter ant, right on the playing field. I guess there are two points here. First, ants are an ubiquitous presence in Paraguay, getting into just about everything. It's a…
This was supposed to go up earlier, but it turns out that thinking you selected "Scheduled" in the MT back end is not, in fact, enough to schedule the post to appear. So this is showing up after games have already begun, but nothing of consequence has happened yet, so it's no biggie. Anyway, the soccer World Cup has begun, making this one of the rare summers with sporting events worth watching on television. And time for the quadrennial spectacle of Americans pretending to know/care about soccer. So, anyway, there's a big tournament going on, and it seems only fair to offer space to discuss…