Camp.

Slate on Thursday had a special summer camp issue, with several articles on the camping experience. Two things of note:

1) Their excellent cultural editor, Meghan O'Rouke, writes about going to (her phrase) "nerd camp", a camp for only the top 3% of academic students in the country:

But the fundamental enterprise remained a shared one, and the weekly dances were, as a friend recently put it, wondrous displays of group awkwardness. In our day, each concluded with either "Sympathy for the Devil," "Ana Ng," or "American Pie,"

If the thought of a group of honors-honors kids dancing around to They Might Be Giants at a forced social doesn't make your secret (or not so secret) inner 13 year old nerd happy, I don't know what will. (re-watch the video for Ana Ng if you've forgotten how much fun tmbg are at times - the desk pounding and the weird hop walk at 2m18s are so wonderful).

2) Summer camp stories, especially about nerd camps, give me an opportunity to dust off my favorite thing I've done for this page, from back in 2000, the time I encouraged the kids in my Computer Summer Camp section to write essays I promised would not get censored or reviewed by parents. Here's what they wrote. They certainly had their finger on the pulse of the immigration debate.

Sending messages.

I'm sure you all have reasons for supporting the Constitutional Ban on Gay Marriage. Here is one you probably haven't thought of: The recent fighting in the Middle East. Quote Rep. Gingrey:

The Democrats accused Republicans of raising the issue even as they ignored what the Democrats said were more pressing problems, including the war in Iraq, an expanding conflict in the Middle East, high gasoline prices and North Korean missile tests.

But Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, said the marriage issue was “just as important and a top-tier issue as any of those.”

Another Georgia Republican, Representative Phil Gingrey, said support for traditional marriage “is perhaps the best message we can give to the Middle East and all the trouble they’re having over there right now.”

I also think that repealing the Death Tax and opening up ANWR for drilling will help with the situation in Darfur personally. It's the second best message we could send.

THE WORLD SPORT - THE UNEVOLVED WORLD, THAT IS

I have already made it perfectly clear that I don't "get" soccer. Much is made of how it is the world sport and apparently we Americans are the odd ones for not getting it. Uncivilized boors like us can only watch sports with violence, constant scoring, or steroidal freaks hitting a ball 700 feet. Blah, blah, blah.

Bullshit. We hate soccer because we have thumbs. Opposable thumbs. We realize this and we take advantage of it by doing things like "picking up," "throwing," or otherwise manually manipulating objects. And yes, we're guilty of demanding more action out of our sports. For some reason we just don't find 120 minutes of 0-0 action followed by penalty kicks to be exciting. Yeah, and we're messed up? Who the hell finds that entertaining? But I digress.

Every time I find myself watching soccer I can't help but wonder how in God's name a fan can possibly take it seriously with the amount of diving, method-acting, and exaggeration the players do. It's a small step away from pro wrestling - a very small step.

I don't think I saw one World Cup game (and living among soccer fanatics, I saw about 75% of them) that didn't feature:

1. Player One slide-tackles Player Two, making minor leg-to-leg contact

2. Player Two goes limp and crumples to the turf in a near-perfect (and no doubt well-rehearsed) re-enactment of Frame 323 of the Zapruder film

3. Player Two grabs his calf/shin/ankle and makes a grimacing face as though he is attempting to defecate a shattered beer bottle

4. Player One throws up his arms, gesturing a combination of "I'm innocent" and "This man is an enormous vagina" to the crowd, followed by "Surely you aren't buying this horseshit" to the ref (who is always from a neutral yet vaguely dislikeable country, usually Argentina)

5. A team of doctors rush over to Player Two with a stretcher, neck brace, donor kidney, gas cromatograph, and the Jaws of Life.

6. After carrying Player Two off the field on said stretcher, he waits until the crowd's attention is diverted back to the game before getting up, walking it off for about 10 feet, and then "heroically" re-joining the action moments after his near-crippling injury.

Charlatanism - and not even very good charlatanism (click for a wonderful video example). I hate to go all neocon on the rest of the world, but I think America should continue to act unilaterally against the global community on this one. Soccer is retarded.