Eideard

Thanks to the new Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, the word fanboy is now officially a member of the English language…

Here’s the official definition, as found in the Collegiate Dictionary, along with the year when Merriam-Webster first saw its unofficial usage. You’ll never guess how old it is!

“Fanboy n. (1919): [a] boy who is an enthusiastic devotee, such as of comics or movies.” Or video game consoles, *cough, cough*

That’s right, readers. Back in the day there were Ford Model T fanboys, among many others throughout the years.

He’s right, you know.

At least 70 people have been injured during the first day of the running of the bulls in the Spanish city of Pamplona. Thirteen of them have been taken to hospital. The injuries consisted mainly of broken bones, bruises and cuts, but one man was left in critical condition after a 600-kilo bull galloped over him. Nobody was gored by a bull…the first day.

The young man who died after a fall from the 30-meter high wall that encircles the ancient centre of Pamplona has now been identified. He was a 23-year-old Irishman and he is thought to have fallen after having too much to drink. Last year, an American man and his Spanish girlfriend also died after falling from the same wall.

Idiots.

Reuters Pictures

The EU’s top farm official is begging German farmers to stop mailing her milk.

Farmers have bombarded Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel with some 10,000 liters of milk to show their anger over an EU proposal to increase milk quotas that may cause prices to fall.

Most of the milk — sent by regular mail and addressed to Fischer Boel — had spoiled in transit, and some of the cartons had burst open.

Fischer Boel pleaded with farmers in a message on her blog Monday to stop sending milk, saying she was happy to talk to them directly to find a solution to their grievances.

Reminds me of opposition to the U.S. military draft during the VietNam War – when the Feds were still putting out postage-paid forms to register for the draft at every post office.

Some folks would wrap a brick and attach one of the postage guaranteed cards. Mail them to the Federal Draft Board.

The title is not misleading. “Dancing” shows a guy dancing: a big, doughy-looking fellow in shorts and hiking boots performing an arm-swinging, knee-pumping step that could charitably be called goofy. It’s the kind of semi-ironic dance that boys do by themselves at junior high mixers when they’re too embarrassed to partner with actual girls.

The dancer is Matt Harding, the 31-year-old creator of the video, and with some New Agey-sounding music playing in the background, he turns up, grinning and bouncing, in 69 different locations, including India, Kuwait, Bhutan, Tonga, Timbuktu and the Nellis Airspace in Nevada, where he performs the dance in zero gravity…

However you interpret it, you can’t watch “Dancing” for very long without feeling a little happier. The music (by Gary Schyman, a friend of Harding’s, and set to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, sung in Bengali by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh now living in Minneapolis) is both catchy and haunting. The backgrounds are often quite beautiful. And there is something sweetly touching and uplifting about the spectacle of all these different nationalities, people of almost every age and color, dancing along with an uninhibited doofus…

Matt isn’t inclined to leap into the Hollywood/media/showbiz hustle of producing “Dancing 2″. Let this live as a video unto itself.

Folks who come up with talented ideas like this generally have more than one gem inside their noggin.

An upcoming WiiWare game based on that most hallowed and cherished of American pastimes — beer pong — has raised the ire of Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

“The video game rating board is under the influence — rating frat party video drinking games suitable for minors,” Blumenthal’s office said in a press release.

Alcohol use as depicted in a game of beer pong is only enough to garner a game a Teen rating.

But even this is no longer included in the game: The publisher, JV Games, has actually pulled the alcoholic content, renaming the game Pong Toss. It’s apparently been re-rated with an E.

But, then, Blumenthal is busy considering an even more important issue for Connecticut residents: should he run for governor or senator?

As the food crisis began to bite, the rumblings of discontent grew louder – and finally, after a day of discussing food shortages and soaring prices, the famished stomachs of the G8 leaders could bear it no longer.

The most powerful stomachs in the world were today compelled to stave off the great Hokkaido Hunger by lining themselves with an eight course dinner prepared by 25 chefs.

This multi-pronged attack on global leadership pangs was launched only hours after a not inconsiderable lunch – four courses, washed down with Chateau Grillet 2005 — which had clearly fully failed to quell appetites possibly enlarged by agonising over the starving citizens of the world.
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How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could drive an S.U.V.? About 25 pounds, says Robert Beam. That’s how much wood it takes to fill the hopper of his 1988 Isuzu Trooper, which he has converted to run on wood chips…

Mr. Beam said that in the summer of 2005, “something was telling me to figure out how to run cars on something other than gas.” He remembered hearing as a child that cars could be made to run on wood, so with the decision-making powers granted by a few beers, he decided to modify the Trooper — it was laid up in his yard in Alfred Station, N.Y., with fuel-injection problems — to burn wood instead of gasoline…

Because it still uses the original 4-cylinder Isuzu engine, the Trooper sounds normal, though it smells a little like a charcoal barbecue. Its top speed is about 45 miles an hour, Mr. Beam said…

He still has plenty of ideas for his system. His current project is a 1991 Mercury Cougar. “The guy I bought it from said I could have it on one condition: that I turn it into a wood-powered car,” Mr. Beam said. He will have to modify the trunk to fit the fuel system, but the car has a supercharger.

“This has the potential to be the fastest wood-powered car on the planet,” Mr. Beam said.

Beam’s experiments may lead nowhere practical – but, what a delightful journey.

When Scott Hoover bought a $5 scratch-off ticket in Virginia called “Beginner’s Luck” last summer, he carefully studied the odds. Even though he figured his chances of winning were a long shot, he felt the odds were reasonable.

Hoover, a business professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, wasn’t surprised when his tickets didn’t bring him the $75,000 grand prize, but he was shocked to learn the top prize had been awarded before he bought the ticket.

“I felt duped into buying these things,” Hoover said.

He discovered the Virginia State Lottery was continuing to sell tickets for games in which the top prizes were no longer available. Public records showed that someone had already won the top prize one month before Hoover played. He is now suing the state of Virginia for breach of contract.

Through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, Hoover’s lawyer was able to obtain records that showed the Virginia State Lottery sold $85 million in tickets for which no top prize was available…

Apparently, half the 42 states selling scratch-off lottery tickets will sell them even if the advertised big payoff has already been won.