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
It's interesting how Penn thinks it has a rivalry with Princeton; this unrequited rivalry reminds me not only of Yale's perceived rivalry with Harvard, but of France's with the United States.
Although everyone changing their minds is frustrating, it might not be that bad: Walt Whitman rewrote Leaves of Grass nine times throughout 40 years. On the other hand, scholars still debate whether these changes improved or worsened Leaves of Grass.
It is a mystery how the tomato arrived in North America from the Andes. My personal favorite theory--which is based on no evidence whatsoever--is that, when the Sephardic Jews who had fled Persia to Provence then emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina, they brought it with them.
Socrates' speech on love in the Symposium--arguing that love is merely a longing for immortality and ideas are immortal--is just a conceit of the intellectual. I prefer Aristophanes' speech, imagining a world in which humans were once four-armed, four-legged, and two-headed balls who tumbled around doing cartwheels, each one split in two and yearning to find their other half.
Of course, the only Bourbon that Whiskey purists drink is that which is distilled in Bourbon County, Kentucky.
