I managed to watch some of the Under 20's world championships a few weeks ago. I caught nearly all of the US vs Brazil match and was struck with how chippy the Brazilian defenders were, particularly when trying to deal with Freddy Adu (who is, by the way, the real deal).

The match reminded me of some old footage from the 74 World Cup when Holland thoroughly dominated Brazil and the Brazilians resorted to the same chippiness.

(Commentary in Dutch -- listen for the word "scandalous", which is similar in Dutch. That about sums it up.)

West Ham defeated Man United on the road on the last day of the season. Coupled with Sheffield United's home loss to hapless Wigan on the same day, meant that Sheffield were relegated to the second division. Hitler, as you might expect, did not take the news particularly well, even threatening to not renew his season ticket for next year...

Had the pleasure of getting to Fenway Park last night for the first time this year. Had some outrageously fine seats courtesy of a vendor and got to enjoy the block party that passes for a Boston Red Sox baseball game. Average game at best, though Manny did put one in the center field bleachers.

Baseball's not so much my thing, but I do enjoy the ritual of the whole thing: the bags of peanuts getting tossed around, the kids with their gloves, the grounds crew with their brooms, the silly sing-along in the seventh inning, the Sweet Caroline silliness; all of it...

The were even a group of old-time geezers right in front of us, guys that looked like they'd been coming to the stadium since the Ted Williams era and who probably still refer to Yaz as "Kid".

Red (who else?) has the only game commentary you need...

OK, this is kinda cool. In a completely insane kind of way...Guess he got tired of waiting for his flying car. I'm growing impatient for my flying car too, but not to the point of insanity.

(Thanks, Tom)

Somewhat relatedly, Glenn Reynolds would like to be about the fourth guy to try spacediving. Maybe.

Nanobots play soccer on a field smaller than a grain of rice at the NanoCup, a competition within the RoboCup competition. Extremely cool, but not for the reasons immediately apparent...

"What do you expect when the robot is six times smaller than an amoeba and weighs no more than a few hundred nanograms?"

It's the great outdoors Carnival of the Recipes -- lots of great summertimes recipes.

Somewhat relatedly, Nancy offers a fine primer on garlic...

I believe to this day that the biggest parenting blunder I ever made was buying a puppy for the Not My Fault daughter over seven years ago. I don't think enough people really consider all the economic implications of dog ownership -- I don't mean the obvious stuff like food and shots and so forth. I mean ruined couches and rugs, vacation weeks at a kennel, ruined shoes and hats, the hidden social cost of dog hair on your pants, etc and etc and ad nauseam...

So what would be revealed if someone actually compiled at least the known costs? Well, wonder no more...(1991 dollars no less. It's like 2 years of college.)

Everyone seemed to have the day off yesterday...Here's why.

My favorite bit is the almost throw-away tag: "..in order to form a more perfect union..." Just love that "more perfect" phrase. "Perfect's" not quite good enough. We want it to be "more perfect". And so it is...