smart

Smugopedia is a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects. We offer you the chance to buy a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction at the small cost of alienating your friends and loved ones.

© 2008 Smugopedia

Tango

Although the Tango greats like Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla are first rate musicians, Tango doesn't capture the "everyday man in the street, letting himself go" sentiment as well as its oft-forgotten contemporary, the Murga, does. You can still see it, with its eccentric Carneval-like costumes and dances, in the provinces of Argentina and Uruguay today.

Ivy League

The Ivy League universities happen to be good schools, but academics has nothing to do with the Ivy League: the Ivy League was founded as a football league and still today remains merely an intercollegiate athletic league.

Voltaire

The extreme degree to which Voltaire was hated by the great men of his era is surprising--hated even by the likes of Mozart, who wrote to his father after Voltaire's death, "the arch-scoundrel Voltaire has finally kicked the bucket."

Everyday Loopholes