When my children were in the 15-20 age range, I more than once told them something along these lines: “Don’t be part of that 1 percent.” That was the shorthand I used for teenagers who die, well, stupidly. By making bad choices. Driving too fast, driving drunk, riding with someone driving drunk, being in bad […]

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It is abundantly clear on which days the UAE domestic soccer league should play. Thursday night and Friday night. Yet, over the first nine weeks of the current season, only once did the league actually plan for a Thursday-Friday schedule. Which is crazy, and here is why.

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I have mentioned this here before, a time or two, in the nearly five years we have been based in Abu Dhabi. How I have never seen a coin on the street, or the sidewalk. Not one. Not in nearly five years. Not even when I used to walk outside more than a little. When […]

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In a previous life, I often compiled a list of the “10 biggest local sports events of the year” and prepared it to run on the morning of December 31. That typically is a slow day in the sports world, and readers often like to have a year recapped for them. And journalists who have […]

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Wow. I just poked around to see reaction to Bill Simmons being suspended by ESPN for three weeks for calling Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, a liar on his (Simmons’s) podcast  … and it seems like every blogger and talking head has weighed in. It’s the perfect storm for sounding off. Seems like most everyone […]

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It’s a bit mind-boggling, the numbers around the Etihad Airlines nontstop flights from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles, instituted on June 1 of this year. They fly their Boeing 777 equipment 16.5 hours without touching ground. On “one tank of gas”, that is. And cover 8,390 miles –making it the third-longest commercial nonstop route in […]

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The Dodgers clinched the National League West tonight by defeating the San Francisco Giants 9-1 behind Clayton Kershaw. Always grand to clinch against the Giants, and let them watch the team in blue celebrate. But, more important, the Dodgers winning the division, and avoiding the wild-card stuff, comes a week after the Angels secured the […]

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Just about the only time in the UAE when I feel like an American is when I am in the U.S. Embassy, which is barely a mile from where we live, near the southern end of Abu Dhabi island. Granted, I don’t feel it right off.

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Today was the first full day of Fall, if I read my almanac correctly. Fall, or Autumn, begins on the day of the autumnal equinox, when every place on Earth gets 12 hours of sun and 12 hours of night. In much of the northern hemisphere, it means cooler weather, perhaps even cold weather, in […]

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We have a handful of outdoor plants arranged on the balcony. Just for the sake of a bit of greenery in a part of the world that has very little of it, naturally. The “dirt” of Abu Dhabi island is not actually dirt. It is sand, with little or no nutrients in it. And not […]

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