American interest in soccer

Remember how interested so many people from the United States were in soccer a few weeks ago? "Soccer" was prominent on many American mainstream news sites. Remember how almost everyone was talking about that upcoming game against Ghana, a game that was to be played on June 26? But then Ghana beat the U.S. That loss now allows us to run a little experiment. How many of those American "soccer" fans were in a "soccer" frenzy merely because the United States had a chance to win? How many of these American "soccer" fans were jingoists rather than true soccer fans? soccer-trends Using Google Trends, you can see how the United States audience falls flat after the United States was knocked out of the tournament. It turns out that a huge number of American "soccer" fans only cared about soccer when patriotism fanned the flames of their "soccer" interest.

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Fading creativity

As IQ inches upwards, creativity is sagging, according to this Newsweek article:

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
Why is this happening? The article suggests some possible reasons. "One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools."

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