Get Cynical

From Sports Illustrated who also has the 20 highest paid international athletes.

For the fourth straight year, Sports Illustrated set out to rank the 50 top-earning American athletes (taking into account on and off the field income), and it’s no surprise to see the familiar names at the top of the list. The most obvious? Tiger Woods has reached an otherworldly plateau of nearly $112 million. Boxing is back from the dead for now, thanks to No. 2 Oscar De La Hoya, and the Shaq and Kobe rivalry lives on.

Half the list is made up of NBA players, while only 12 baseball players and five football players made the cut. There were three NASCAR drivers and just one woman (welcome, Michelle Wie!). Meanwhile, our International 20 list of the top-earning non-American athletes is dominated by soccer players, of whom there are nine, including Major League Soccer-bound David Beckham.

(via Digg)

Some nine years ago, I spent time with a woman I shouldn’t have…. And I paid her with a check.

This pretty much sums it up:

Kakistocracy, rule by the least-able or least-principled of citizens, is a form of government in which the people least qualified to control the government are the people who control the government.

The origin of this word is Greek, derived from the superlative of the Greek adjective kakos (bad), the superlative form being kakistos (worst).

This person has put subtitles (with corresponding photos) to Pearl Jam’s Yellow Ledbetter. Hilarity ensues.

Wikipedia’s entry on Joseph Byerle who is believed to be the only American soldier who also served with the Russian military during WWII:

On June 6, D-Day, Beyrle’s C-47 came under enemy fire over the Normandy coast, and he was forced to jump from the exceedingly low altitude of 120 meters. After landing in St. Côme-Du-Mont, Sergeant Beyrle lost contact with his fellow paratroopers, but succeeding in blowing up a power station. He performed other sabotage missions before being captured by German soldiers a few days later.

Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons, escaping twice only to be recaptured. Beyrle and his fellow prisoners had been hoping to find the Soviet army, which was a short distance away. After the second escape, Beyrle was turned over to the Gestapo by a German civilian. Beaten and tortured, he was released to the German military after officials stepped in and determined that the Gestapo had no jurisdiction over prisoners of war.

Beyrle was taken to the Stalag III-C POW camp in Alt Drewitz, from which he escaped in early January 1945. He headed east, hoping to meet up with the Soviet army. Encountering a Soviet tank brigade in the middle of January—reportedly holding his “hands up and [saying], ‘Amerikansky tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch”—Beyrle convinced the brigade’s commanders to allow him to fight alongside the unit on its way to Berlin, beginning his month-long stint in a Soviet tank battalion, where his demolitions expertise was appreciated.

Be sure to read Beyrle’s account of his experiences.

My favorite part of Jack Nicholson’s reaction.

Instructables on how to freebase catnip:

At least two thirds of domestic cats “enjoy” the effects of Nepeta, a.k.a. “catnip.” But do they it enjoy it enough? If humans were able to isolate the active ingredient in catnip, could we not use it to become omnipowerful CATGODS? Imagine the possibilities! What fool wouldn’t want their own personal cat army? A massive fuzzy force with which to execute your every bidding? A united, unquestioning militia that requires nothing other than unfettered access to the super-powerful catnip products that give their adorable cuddly lives meaning?

Nepetalactone is the active ingredient in catnip.* Today we are going to isolate nepetalactone in its pure form through a steam distillation. The distilled liquid will be extracted with an organic solvent (toluene), refined, then evaporated to give the final product.

(via Make:Blog)

(via Grow a Brain)