Alex posted earlier about Kobe Bryant speaking fluent Italian - very cool, indeed. His post linked to a video of Kobe jumping over a pool of snakes. I ran across the snake jump video itself on YouTube just now and felt like it deserved its own post. It's Kobe and a bunch of the guys from Jackass playing in and around a swimming pool filled with water and a lot of snakes. I happen to hate snakes, so stunts like these knot me up inside. Kobe does an awesome flying jump to make a basket over the pool without even getting close to the serpents contained within. This is exactly the sort of silly stuff that keep those Jackass folks near and dear to our hearts.
Update, 5/30/08: Real or fake? The debate rages on in comments below. Neatorama homeslice Rhett breaks out the old slide-rule on his site DotPhys and tries to answer the question. Check it out.
"I told you, I'm not Xena. I'm Lucy Lawless."
1) not fake at all
2) cheated, using a trampoline to jump (but it didn't look like he did)
3) fake, but an AWESOME fake
I did an analysis of this jump - horizontal and vertical acceleration are what you would expect for a real jump
http://dotphys.net/files/kobe.html
Yeah, Ireland is totally overrun with rats and mice. That's why it's called the "Brown Isle", on account of all the mice and rats. You can't even see the ground.
You're probably one of those people that think if it weren't for the two spiders living in your yard, you would be suffocated by mosquitoes. Like they're some sort of super pest control.