Henry Barthes: [DOUBLETHINK is on the blackboard, from Orwell's "1984". When none of the students knows what it means he tells them] It's deliberately believing in lies while knowing they're false.
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow pu...
What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.
Occupy Wall Street was a disorganized movement without a clear focus and power base - essential in any successful revolution - but the message was clear: the divisions between those who are fortunate enough to enjoy city living as opposed to those wh...
Fundamental systemic crises are often associated with the decline of the dominant imperial power and its increasing inability to sustain the system over which it had previously presided. The profound instability of the interwar period owed much to Br...
The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east A...
Humanity has nearly suffocated the globe with carbon dioxide, yet nuclear power plants that produce no such emissions are so mired in objections and obstruction that, despite renewed interest on every continent, it is unlikely another will be built i...
Being president, you may have more power than anyone else in the country, but you quickly discover that you have much, much less than you thought you'd have going in. You're hamstrung in ways you never dreamed of.
Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.
I was always one of those people who would watch the Super Bowl as much for the sports as I did for the ads. I was always just sort of fascinated by the fact that when you turn on the TV, there was motion, there was moving pictures on it.
I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards.
No one pretends anymore that the Olympics are just about sports. It's routine to talk about what effect holding the Games in this or that capital will have on the host country's international reputation, how a nation's prestige can be raised by its m...
The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest ...
Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.
I don't want to return to the past. I don't yearn for when I was 18 years old. I was in high school then. I had acne. I had a terrible hairdo. I'm sure I was sporting polyester pants.
There were always plenty of newspapers in the house. 'The Times', 'Guardian', 'Daily Telegraph' and 'Daily Mail' were all regular fixtures on the coffee table. I used to enjoy reading 'The Times' editorial pages and the 'Daily Mail' sports pages.
For watching sports, I tend to drink Guinness; early evenings always begin well with a Grey Goose and tonic with plenty of lime; and on a cold winter's night, there's nothing quite like a glass of Black Maple Hill... an absolute peach of a bourbon.
The more expensive and/or exclusive a sport, the whiter it tends to be: the fact almost has the force of a law. That is the main reason why the Rugby World Cup, the Pacific islands excepted, was so desperately white, the Springboks included.
Where the costs of entry are minimal, there is a wide avenue of opportunity for those with little or nothing, which is why football is just about the most democratic sport of all: African and Brazilian footballers compete on a level playing field wit...
People who think they know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the sports press - no matter how much evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to think that what they think is...
Males have probably always enjoyed watching the defeat of other males, but without the invention of numerals and the subsequent invention of the concept of keeping score, we could never have had a million sports channels.
