Read this. And then feel foolish.

The Origin of the Word “Soccer”

For all you out there who love to complain when Americans, and certain others, call “Football”, “Soccer”, you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of the first names of what we now primarily know of as “Football”.

Update: My friend Tom says:”That was definitely written by a yank and is complete rubbish!”In fact, the article linked to above really doesn’t list any sources.
Wikipedia, however, might not exactly be a respected source in general, but it does list plenty of references on the origin of soccer.
I’m not saying any of it is true or not. I call it “football” myself, anyway. Just thought you might want to think about it. Why else would we call it “soccer” in America? We had to get it from somewhere and it certainly wasn’t from American Indians.

Another update: Here’s John Cleese’s input:

Thanks, Hans! I’ll think of you when Holland loses…

Oh well, that was it then. USA lost against Ghana 2:1. I’m crushed, but it was a very exciting game and the Ghanesians certainly deservedly won. Better luck in 2014!

This article just about sums up how I feel today…

America: F–K YEAH! A Historic Win, On the Front Lines

There is only one headline that fits this story: Holy fucking shit.

I’d say our team’s win today was also an elegant “fuck you” in the face of that referee who called the first goal “offside”. Where do they find these referees that couldn’t count to 21 if they were barefoot without pants?!

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Vuvuzela Filter Strips Droning Horns from World Cup Broadcasts

Simon, product manager at National Instruments (NI), wrote in to point us to a free bit of software he wrote up, which uses the back-end of NI’s LabView software to automatically filter and cut out the frequency ranges where vuvuzelas, the celebratory horns that sound like disturbed locusts, or maybe angry bees, drone on endlessly during World Cup matches.

Reblogged from lifehacker

Brilliant. Only German-speakers will get this video, but most American’s don’t give a rat’s about soccer, anyway. Except for my friends Mike and Jan L., who as die-hard-fans were here in Germany in 2006, and of course my brothers George and Mike.

I’m thinking it’ll end with Germany : Argentina. What do you think? It would be incredibly cool if the US team made it to the finals. But then the World Cup is not a Disney movie yet.