Streaming number crunch Anytime the UFC drops a surprise - as it did on Thanksgiving - fans polarize. The resulting amount of negative sentiment amongst hardcore fans is enough to fill a grand canyon of criticism. The critiques typically make judgments about who ‘deserves’ a title shot, whether ‘interim’ titles are a thing and identifying whatever lack of fight-purity they perceive. At its worst, it represents the fight business’ version of virtue signaling. At its best it re

"And he starts to roam the streets at night; and he learns how to fight..." If you listen closely and pay attention to UFC fighters, it is downright astounding what you can learn. Yesterday, apart from discovering that The Bullet  Valentina Shevchenko is a fluent polyglot, we also learned that she traces her martial arts genealogy back to Ed Parker — the American Kenpo master — and by extension… wait for it… Elvis Presley. Yes, that  Elvis. The inventor of the best sandwich e

Plimpton Ponders Polycene Thomas Friedman, in conversation with Craig Mundie, has begun calling our era the Polycene, a world defined by many  forces interacting simultaneously. The Polycene's opposite is a unipolar world— one thing, one superpower, one cause and effect. Polycene is a fitting word for an epoch of global interconnection, where everything affects everything else, all the time. The Polycenic problem is that sometimes words are too  good for our usage. Words mean

Kabletown's Mouse House Backtake An American’s commitment to his or her fellow citizen looks like that level of cooperation necessary to manage through a four way stop. ‘I go; no you go, ok wait, me now?’ If cooperation requires any more pain than that, we’re out and feel put upon. If even more sacrifice is required, we're likely to riot.  And so if being civil to your fellow citizens at a 4-way stop represents the apogee of American cooperative spirit, then imagine how piss