Overnight Open Thread - World Cup Edition

Happy Thursday all.

The 2010 World Cup Starts Tomorrow

Okay I know a lot of you aren't interested/hate soccer, but the World Cup is a once in four year thing. So if you could muster the fortitude to actually watch a curling match during the Olympics, well the least you can do is cheer on the US team which actually has a non-theoretical chance of advancing this go around.

Truthfully I don't love soccer as much as other sports, but I've warmed up to it in the last year or so. Mostly because I work with a lot of European types who don't know shit about baseball or football. So if I'm gonna talk sports with them and do a little trash talkin' about their faves, it going to have be in soccer. And if there's one thing I love more than seeing Boston fans disappointed, it's seeing Americans beat foreigners. So I've learned to like soccer enough to be able talk it up with them and slowly break their spirits with sport-appropriate insults.

And having started running recently, I've also come to respect the players' fitness levels as well as their ball handling skills. On average a pro soccer player runs about 7 miles each game while the referees run over 10 and a lot of that is sprinting. So as sissy as they can seem, soccer players are probably some of the fittest athletes in the world.

Oh and the US's first game in on Saturday at 2:30pm EST against England.

So here's some links for those who may not love soccer but are willing follow the US in the 2010 WC:
Bracket Chart For Following The Games
Where to watch the games live
ABC and ESPN will have the games on TV and ESPN3 should stream all the games online.

Cracked's World Cup Preview for (and by) People Who Don’t Care
CNN: Want to sound like a World Cup expert?
How to fake it for the next few weeks.
10 Best Footballers in the FIFA World Cup 2010
Be sure and look out for Kaka.
Are You Catching World Cup Fever?
Yeah the World Cup probably is a backdoor way to get the US to accept the metric system. But I'm still willing to watch and cheer the US team.
The 55 Sexiest South African Women
Okay not strictly soccer-related but I think some these ladies might have dated a soccer player at some point

Rumor: HuffPo Selling Out to Yahoo
They've been losing money for a while but deny the sale

White House Press Briefing Room: A Hotbed of Gay Cruising?
Don't ask, don't tell, and don't ask any tough questions of Obama.

Celebrities With And Without Makeup
Makes you wonder how much of celebrity-hood is just good makeup, fashion, and hair styling.

So how long can a human live unprotected in space?
Thanks to a vacuum chamber accident in 1965 we have a pretty good idea: at least 30 seconds, maybe a minute or two.

The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

How Cars Should Be Equipped These Days
Since all cell phones are going to USB chargers, why not include them in the car?

16 Year Old Girl Feared Drowned on Around the World Sail
She was trying beat Jessica Watson's record and hasn't been heard from since 6am this morning when her emergency beacon has gone off.

The 12 Deadliest Garden Plants
Surprisingly the poinsettia is one of the least deadly poisonous plants.

The Most Carnivorous Country in the World is Denmark?
Apparently so - the average Dane eats 321lbs of meat a year while Americans come in 5th(!) at 275lbs. It turns out that Denmark is the world's largest export of pigs and pork products. And that's what they don't eat themselves. We must close the meat gap with the Scandis! And man can those Danes party.

Ancient Birth Control techniques
Turns out the sponge and IUD have been around for a long time.

Shaggy Busted For Illicit Dog Love
Rut-roh!

Yahoo group. That is all.

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posted by Maetenloch at 10:00 PM

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