Last week the Winter Olympics began focusing on many people’s favorite sport… figure skating. It’s like watching beautiful butterflies magically flutter through the air, a miracle of human grace.

…Or something.

Here are the real reasons men watch the Olympic figure skating:

Top ten reasons why men watch Olympic figure skating

1. You get to say phrases like ‘that was a rough quadruple salchow’ even though you’re not a surgeon.
2. The blades bring back a secret nostalgia for The Mighty Ducks.
3. You get to rate the skaters along with the judges, although your points are based on the same scale as HotOrNot.com.
4. It’s either watching this or Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader – and you know you’re not.
5. Seeing men in periwinkle spandex reasserts your manhood.
6. The lifts on ice give you great material for the book you’re working on ‘Kama Sutra Santa.’
7. There is an evil enjoyment to be had in watching someone trip and fall on ice.
8. The ratio of the girls’ skirts flying in the air versus covering the booty is 4:1.
9. You get to watch #7 and #8 get replayed in slow motion.
10. Hey, you need to associate something positive with The Nutcracker.

Today marks the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. This will be Canada’s second Winter Olympics (Calgary hosted in 1988). David Atkins, the director of the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, is the mastermind behind the ceremonies in Vancouver this year.

Although the details of the event are a closely guarded secret, here are a five factoids about this year’s opening ceremonies:

Five Factoids about tonight’s Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver

1. No expense spared.

   Canada spent $40 million for the February 12 opening ceremonies, making it the most expensive opening ceremonies in Winter Olympics history.

2. Indoors?!

   The 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies will be the first ever to be held indoors. It’s a good thing, because rain is often in Vancouver’s forecast!

3. Greece takes the lead.

   Because it is the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Greece always leads the march of the athletes. After the Greek team, the countries will follow alphabetical order from Albania to Uzbekistan, with the host team, Canada, appearing last.

4. Go, Clara, go…

   The flag bearer for the Canadian team is Clara Hughes, a cyclist and speed skater and the first athlete to win multiple Olympic medals in both the Summer and Winter games. She won the gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics for the women’s 5000 meter speed skating by 1.01 seconds!

5. Doves on fire!

   One of the traditions of every Olympic opening ceremony is the release of doves, which symbolize peace. Originally the doves were released before the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. But in the 1988 Seoul Summer Games several doves perched on the cauldron and went up in flames, forcing the International Olympic Committee to change the traditional order. Yikes!

The opening ceremonies are guaranteed to be a spectacle. Tune into NBC at 7:30 p.m. EST or check your local TV listings to catch the Olympic spirit and cheer your country on!

The 2010 Winter Olympics are set to kick off in Vancouver this Friday, featuring 15 winter sports. While that sure is a bag of fun, are you aware of the weirdest Olympic sports of all time? Learn about it below. Oh, and be prepared – a bunch of them involve animals.

The 7 weirdest Olympic sports

1. Biathlon.

   Biathlon: Sounds like a contest to see how much biology you know. In general, it’s a sporting term for one event with two disciplines. In relation to the Olympics, it’s a winter sport combining-cross country skiing and… rifle shooting. Yeah… I’ll stay a safe distance away from that one.

2. Pigeon racing.

   Imagine a time when there was no Internet. No Super Bowl. Not even World Wars to look back on. That was the year 1900 – a year when pigeon racing was an Olympic sport.

   And, well, the only year that it was an Olympic sport.

3. Skeleton.

   Dare to believe in a whole new take on sledding. No, this is not the Rosebud from your childhood, folks. This is skeleton, a one-man face-down sled race on an ice track. I shudder to think why it’s called skeleton.

4. Skijoring.

   How much do you really trust your pet? Would you let Rover take the lead while attached to him with a rope… on skis? That’s skijoring, and it’s ski-aring the bejesus out of me. In the 1928 Winter Olympics it was a demonstration sport, using horses.

5. Curling.

   

   Curling, to me, sounds like it should mean something completely different – like some kind of salon Olympics. It’s anything but: the game involved two four-person teams sliding heavy stones towards a circle drawn at either end of an ice court. It originated in Scotland; somehow that makes sense.

6. Handball.

   You may be familiar with handball as a school recess favorite, but an older version of the game known as field handball did play a role as a sport in the 1936 Summer Olympics. It even had six teams contesting.

7. Korfball.

   Korfball is a version of netball played in outer space… Kidding! It is, however, a mixed-gender version of netball played in 57 countries. It was a demonstration sport in the 1920 and 1928 Olympic games. Each team consists of four men and four women… but no mixed duels! Keep it clean, kids.

As reported by the fancy WikiAnswers PR people over at Answers.com headquarters, WikiAnswers now has over 4 million questions under its bulging belt.

With the summer Olympic games in full swing these last few weeks, it’s no shock that the four millionth question went something like this:

Are there any new sports in the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

It has a great answer, too. 3000m Steeplechase… Hmmm… Is that like running after churches?

Congrats to WikiAnswers and the wonderfully active community behind every single question and answer. Some of us had a running poll to guess when the site would reach 4 million. I’m proud to say I optimistically claimed August.

Now, on to 5 million… By next week?