Ode to Soccer -- why we should LOVE the sport

Here's a post for all those belly-aching "non-soccer people" out there who wonder WTF anybody would care so much about the most important sport in the world. Let's call this: ODE TO SOCCER and  quirky facts about a sport that an estimated 3.5 billion people in the world follow plus a compendium of useless trivia about it.

• ETYMOLOGY: Guess what? Soccer IS the correct "English" term for the game. It comes from "Association Football" because there were two games, association football  or Rugby football. Rugby was called "rugger" and they couldn't very well call the other game "asser" now, could they? So they called it "soccer." American football, what we just call "football" in the States, started catching on in the states at the same time. So, JUST LET ME SAY SOCCER INSTEAD OF "FOOTBALL" PLEASE!
• GEOGRAPHY: My experience teaching is that kids are better with geography when they watch soccer. This is TRUE! There isn't a kid in Colombia who doesn't know where Argentina and Barcelona, Spain are because of Lionel Messi, or Portugal and Madrid, Spain because of Cristiano Ronaldo. Or Manchester, England, Madrid, Spain, and Los Angeles, California because of Beckham. Alas, soccer fans are great geographers.
• POWER: In Argentina, there's a Maradonian Church after, you have it, Diego Maradona (drug addictions, scandals, and liposuction aside, he IS a God there.) As I write this he's a MERE three wins away in this world cup to deification, and possibly a coup d'etat, replacing Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as president. (Yes, I exaggerate ... just a bit). Henri Thierry, as soon as France was shamefully disqualified and didn't make the top sixteen, got on a plane and landed at Sarkozy's presidential doors in Paris. Sarkozy moved all meetings that day to receive Thierry. In 1969 the war between Honduras and El Salvador is called "the soccer war". Obviously, soccer isn't the REASON the countries went to war, it just helped it along. Soccer, as a sport, religion and political system (using these terms loosely) is something to really pay close attention to.

• SEASON: Soccer has no season. It's year-round.

• ODD FACTS AND STATISTICS:  

• Europeans have reached the final of EVERY world cup except for 1930 and 1950. (And perhaps, 2010)
• I first started watching soccer because of a HUGE CRUSH I had on Chris -- mid-fielder -- when I was a sophomore in high school. (Told you these were odd facts). We're still friends, though he never fell madly in love with me. 
• Goalie, Arthur Wharton, was the first professional African soccer player (born in Ghana) and played for an English team in Rothham (1889).
• Pele's real name is Edson ARantes do Nascimento  (from Brazil). In 1366 games, he scored 1283 goals.
• India has qualified for the World Cup once, in 1950, but had to withdraw because they weren't allowed to play barefoot.

Random Publishing Facts

I always am amazed by this business and often get questions about HOW things work. So I've accumulated a few facts that might answer questions you've had ... or not. Either way, here goes.

Publishers can be categorized as:

• Trade (a source of over half the books in English language -- what we generally think of when we think about publishers.)
  
• Textbook Remember those heavy Biology 101 books at college or the infernal social studies books in high school? This is a pretty profitable market because the books are bought not by choice but obligation available for us at the college bookstore!
  
• Scholarly or Academic: University Presses
• Reference: This shouldn't be confused with textbooks as reference books are found in bookstores across the country -- not only college bookstores. The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music for instance. Reference books cover everything from music to tools to house projects and recipes.
• Self-published: This is pretty self explanatory.
  

The SIX SISTERS of publishing refers to six conglomerates that have control of, from what I understand 80% of the market of the publishing world.

• (Germany): Bertelsmann AG owns 70 imprints including Random House, Knopf, Ballantine, Crown, Pantheon, Vintage, Bantam Dell, Broadway Doubleday, Anchor, and Villard, Del Ray, Fodor's and Fawcett that are divided into three groups
• (US): Simon & Schuster includes Pocket Books, Free Press, Scribner, Touchstone, Fireside, and Atria Books
• (France): Hachette Book Group, USA owns Little Bro, own and Company and Grand Central Publishing, which has ten imprints
• (Australia/News Corp.): HarperCollins includes Harper Paperbacks, Harper Mass Market, HarperOne, HarperBusiness, Avon, William Morrow, and Ecco (United Kingdom/Pearson): Penguin Group (USA) includes Penguin, Putnam, Viking, Berkley, Signet, Plume, Grosset, Ace, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Dutton, Penguin Press, Perigee and Portfolio
• (Germany/Holtzbrinck): Macmillan U.S. includes Henry Holt and Company, St. Martin's Press, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Between the six sisters, midsized publishing houses (that are "independent", not owned by conglomerates, like McPherson and Company and Holloway House) and small houses (university presses), there are more than 86,000 publishing companies worldwide.

Wikipedia has a massive list of publishing houses and links to each house:

RANDOM FACTS:

• Over 70% of all books published sell fewer than 500 copies.
• Only 3% of books sell over 1,000 copies
• Only 1% of books sell over 5,000 copies
• According to RR Bowker (the company that issues and maintains info about ISBN numbers) there are more than 1, 879,000 books available in the world. So, doing my weird calculations, the average person who lives to 85 and starts reading at 5 would have to read 65 books per day to read all the books available. (And yes, I'm adding to that number ... happily!)
• Most of those available books came from small publishers.

That's all for now ... Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Facts and numbers are obscure and hard to come by -- lots of discrepancies, so I took my facts from solid sources ... and cross-referenced them and all that jazz.

Colombia from the Hip! Working Hard ...

SELLING MINUTES: People buy plans with several cell phone providers and sell minutes on several phones, wiring themselves to the phones so nobody will steal them.

HORSE-DRAWN CART: It's common to see horse-drawn carts on the streets of Pereira (and killer for traffic at times). They're contracted much like a truck ... but they're horses.

Rant: Ten *Irrelevant* Things that Bug Me

No rhyme or reason to these things and in no particular order ...

1. People who talk on the phone or text while driving. (This, I believe, should be against the law. It IS in Colombia. Why not in the States?)
   
2. People who talk on cell phones in elevators, at dinner ... and loud.
   
3. Children beauty pageants (HOW is that NOT considered emotional abuse subjecting a four-year-old to such inanity? Why not wear a badge that says: Look how shallow I am.)
4. Turtlenecks.
5. Watching or hearing somebody floss his teeth. ICK!
   
6. Anyways (IT'S NOT A WORD!) and irregardless (IT'S NOT A WORD!)
7. TV in the morning (unless it's a sporting event or news): TV should not be turned on until after dinner ...
8. SUV Hummers
9. That annoying sound that someone opening candy makes in a movie theater when she's trying to be particularly quiet but isn't, so it takes freaking forever to open a candy and everybody is stuck hearing the excruciating crackle crackle of the wrapper.
10. Cliche.