The Happy Moron

The downfall story goes like this:
A Russian politician is beguiled into indiscretion by a pretty girl who ultimately proves to have:

A video camera
An ulterior motive

Says Mr. Yashin (from the linked BBC story),
“She was pretty and I fell for her and behaved like any single young person would.”
“I didn’t suspect anything until drugs and sex toys [...]

Perspective is a funny thing.
I’m sure there are thousands of little German boys who would have given anything to be in Robert Enke’s place – the first-choice goaltender for the German national football team.
But on Tuesday, he threw it all away when he walked in front of a train.
Thousands of people are willing to point [...]

Our confidence is only as strong as the stuff it’s built on.
I’m immensely proud of being the #1 site for the search terms, “anglican funk” on Google. (It used to work without quotes, but now it only works with quotes.) It’s me, babe.
But when my confidence is based almost exclusively on funk, its not hard [...]

I know someone who has difficulty seeing faces. She doesn’t reliably recognize people by their face, so she uses other cues like body language and voice.
This has a nifty side-effect… She’s always friendly when greeting and talking, because until she draws someone into conversation, she’s not quite sure who they are. They could be anyone, [...]

Told people how he felt before he performed a desperate act…
…the message read: “I’ve had enough. I’m fed up with this horrid life… Always the same. People are laughing at me… No-one sees my potential… I am scared, I have weapons here, and I will go to my former school tomorrow and then I will [...]

From Tim Vickery @ the BBC, on the pressures of modern football,
“Losing his father, as Adriano told me last year in an interview for Sports Illustrated, had a delayed but devastating effect on his career. Pleasing his father had always been one of his driving forces to succeed in football.
“Now he even considered the [...]

The article is about Pakistan’s passion for cricket and the shockwaves resulting from the terrorist attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team. But this quote is all about bored young men.
“But I wonder how many kids watching these attackers in action might think that playing Rambo in front of a world audience is more fun [...]

One of the things that I am learning in prayer ministry is that, for everything that we do,  there is a reason. Often it’s not, objectively speaking, a very good reason. From a practical point of view, however, the only thing that matters is that it makes sense to us when we make our decision [...]

Happen in football as well as computer software.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, what he’s got in terms of his ability he should be playing in the Premier League.
“But obviously there’s something within him, the person, that stops him from doing it.”
This story bothers me in a way that is difficult [...]

This one is sad. 
The parents defended their son’s decision, saying he was “an intelligent young man of sound mind” who was “not prepared to live what he felt was a second-class existence”.
It doesn’t always matter whether or not we’re intelligent or of sound mind.
The article titles him as a “paralyzed rugby player”.
Now if, when you [...]