The Winter Olympics are only a few weeks away, which is great news if you like sports, happiness, sunshine, and smiles...and bad news if you're a tree, apparently. Above, the Vancouver Olympic Committee shows off the new speed skating oval, the roof of which was built entirely out of lumber milled from trees killed by pine beetles. The organizers are declaring it an architectual feat, but the pine beetles probably have the last laugh here, right? Just saying, Greenpeace!

Anyway, aside from the pine beetles, Canadians, and five to ten hockey fans left in America, it's hard to sense any "Olympics Fever" in this great nation of ours. Personally, I blame NBC for this -- because every problem on television seems to be NBC's fault these days -- but thanks to the Internet, we can solve this problem. The BBC has whipped together some pretty awesome animation to promote the games, and it's waiting for you after the jump.

When you were 7, you probably were "above average" at a few things. Personally, I was always an above-average eater. But whatever it was, you probably couldn't make any money off your skills. So it's really envy-enducing when kids like Kieron Williamson, the 7-year-old Reuters profiles above, can sell his paintings for thousands of dollars. Apparently, he's the next Monet.

Of course, calling a 7-year-old the next Monet is like projecting that I would win the 2012 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest after I ate an entire family-sized can of SpaghettiOs at age 4. (That's a true story, by the way.) If history is a lesson, little Kieron's story will end poorly -- see "My Kid Could Paint That" for a similar case. But like Malcolm Gladwell explained in The New Yorker a while back, humans do love them some prodigies, and Williamson does seem to be a pretty precocious painter. (Alliteration!) My advice? Take the money and run, Kieron. Sure, your artistic peers might catch up to you eventually, but at least you'll be able to live in an apartment in your twenties, and not in an artist's colony in Williamsburg.

Above is a story from Reuters about a group of people who choose to swim in frozen lakes in Beijing, China. The swimmers believe that the cold water brings them health and youth, and swim in the frozen lakes daily. The water is so cold, in fact, that the club members must break a lane in the ice every morning to be able to swim in it.

Now, I'm all for the cold tub, and the occasional ice bath for athletes who are in training. This, however, I cannot approve of for many reasons; among them the temperature of the water, distance of the swim lane, and doing this kind of thing everyday. What, you thought I was just going to call them crazy? Keep in mind these people all seem to be old! There are legitimate medical concerns!

One lady interviewed says she thinks swimming every day in the ice water has helped cure her illnesses, including cancer. That's just crazy talk, because otherwise the Mr. Freeze storyline in "Batman and Robin" could be classified as a work of non-fiction. But, mental confusion is a symptom of hypothermia, so we'll go easy on her. Still, people of Beijing: Swimming in a frozen lake every day is a very bad idea, indeed!

Parkour is a lot of things, but mostly it's a great way to convince your parents that you have serious problems with hyperactivity, and need to wear a helmet at all times. Just kidding, it's actually a French-created combination of dance, gymnastics, walking, and (I assume) caffeine. You probably got a YouTube clip of it sent to you a few years ago, but now that it's the next big thing in China (above), it's about to get a lot more extreme. China, of course, is the home of Kung fu. Imagine if they had Parkour in Bruce Lee's time. Acutally, scratch that. People probably weren't bored enough to invent it then.

But that's not the only place Parkour is thriving. Hit "continue reading" for some other places the "Internet sensation of 2004" is still alive and well.

Beep boop! Do you ever wonder whether dieting would be easier if robots could help us do it? Of course you do not! Like most normal people, you spend most of your time thinking about ways robots could serve as our euphemistic "companions." But what if they could also help us get to a weight that didn't disgust other humans? I know, it would negate all the time you've wasted imagining the perfect robot sex partner. But maybe that's a good thing? And maybe it's not. I'm not your shrink or your priest!

Meet Autom, whose name is pronounced "Autumn," but because she is a lady robot, or "DietBot," she spells her name "Autom," which is short for "Automatic," I think. Autom, who I have to admit is sort of sexy, helps people to record calorie intake and exercise logs on her tummy, which looks like the screen of a palm pilot.

Autom is from China, like most robots, and in a study of people trying to lose weight, those who used Autom to do it ("it" means diet; GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER) stayed on their diets for five weeks longer than those who used the same software on a computer. That's all the proof I need to insist that our goverment's new health care plan include provisions for DietBot assignments to every American trying to lose weight, and to the remaining citizens of this great land who merely want to hang out with -- and possibly make out with -- a comely replicant. Beep boop!

When the trailers started hitting the media and the details of James Cameron's long-gestating "Avatar" started to emerge, there were plenty of skeptics who doubted that the movie would ever make back its reported $500 million budget. (For instance: this guy at Slate.) But even though the film will need to make EVEN MORE money than this to be profitable, it has met one impressive-sounding benchmark by grossing $1 blillion, as Reuters reports above.

And for those who've seen and loved the movie, the fun's not over: extend your "Avatar" experience after the jump.

Ryan Seacrest -- who's subbing on the annual "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" for its eponymous host this year, as he did last year (having co-hosted several outings in earlier years) -- claims in the clip above that every night before New Year's Eve, Dick Clark prays that Seacrest will have to helm the show in horrendous, beastly weather. This year, it looks like Clark's prayers may not have been answered. Click "continue reading" for more.

At last, the world is flat once more! And not just because Thomas Friedman says so. A much more important person has flattened the world: a dude who makes maps. This is the scariest news since someone decided that Pluto is not a planet.

At least this revelation came in time for Christmas. Let's hope someone gives the new map to Santa and let him open it early. It will, no doubt, help him to plot a more efficient course and save some reindeer gas. But he might just want to skip Prague this year. Find out why after the jump.

It's a little late to cash in on the buzz from that nasty cup and those two nasty girls, but a toilet-themed restaurant in Beijing is trying. You really have to see its soft-serve. It's chocolate, promise...served in a plastic urinal. But it gets better/worse. One of the items on its menu is called "Our Famed Constipation." Nope, it's not a brick of cheese. It's just deep-fried potatoes. That actually sounds pretty tasty.

Then there is Fabio Viviani. Poor Fabio. His charm certainly extended his stay on "Top Chef" by a few extra episodes, but a critic who visited his new restaurant in North Hollywood slammed it pretty hard. Here's a pop quiz. Is this quote from a review of Fabio's restaurant or the toilet restaurant? "The idea of combining excrement and food is nothing new." The answer is after the jump.

H1N1 is a big deal to your parents, and they're always telling you to carry hand sanitizer "because they love you." The swine flu's also a big deal to the shouty heads on TV, who tell you to sneeze into your elbow, because sneezing into your hands will probably kill you. (You try to fill 24 hours with two hours of news!) And of course, there's the crazy person at your office that you can barely tolerate; they're still walking around disinfecting the light fixtures because "the germs are everywhere!" The point is, H1N1 is a menace, it's getting stronger (proof above), and it must be stopped.

So whom do we turn to in times of public health crisis? The World Health Organization? (WHO indeed! Pun!) The Red Cross? "MythBusters"? They're all too science-y. Instead, we listen to the brilliant experts at Cosmopolitan magazine, who have graciously given us some suggestions about how to stop the H1N1 epidemic. They include avoiding bear hugs, opting for "terrorist fist-jabs" over shaking hands...and even a more sanitary way to have sex with the consenting adult of your choosing. Cosmo even put together a nice graphic for their tips, which I suggest printing out and carrying with you. Safety first! Hit "continue reading" below to see it after the jump.