German Wine Classifications

(I think this is from either Wikipedia or some other random wine site.  I'm sorry that I can’t attribute it's origin.  I’m posting it as a reference for the future since it is quite comprehensive.)

German wine classification is sometimes the source of confusion, especially to non-German speakers. However, to those familiar with the terms used, a German wine label reveals much information about the quality level and dryness/sweetness of the wine.

• Deutscher Tafelwein (German table wine) is mostly consumed in the country and not exported.
• Deutscher Landwein (German country wine) comes from a larger designation and again doesn't play an important role in the export market.
• Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA) wines are simple wines that meet the first level of quality.
• Prädikatswein, recently (August 1, 2007) renamed from Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP) wines are of greater quality. The grapes for these wines must meet a certain level of ripeness. As ripeness increases, the fruit characteristics and price increase.
• Kabinett wines are made from grapes picked several days after the QbA grapes are picked. These are the first picked grapes of the Prädikat level.
• Spätlese wines ("late harvest") are made from grapes harvested 12-14 days after the Kabinett grapes are picked.
• Auslese wines ("select harvest") are made from grapes that have been hand-selected out from the other grapes. These grapes are late-harvest and have a high sugar content.
• Beerenauslese wines ("berry selection") are made from grapes that have been left on the vine longer than the Auslese grapes. These grapes develop the fungus Botrytis, which removes the moisture from the grape. Thus these wines are very sweet and make good dessert wines.
• Eiswein (ice wine) wine is made grapes that freeze naturally on the vine and reach a sweetness of Beerenauslese level. The grapes are harvested and pressed in the frozen state. The ice keeps part of the water isolated to achieve the high sugar content of these wines.
• Trockenbeerenauslese wines ("dry berries selection") are extremely sweet, concentrated and usually quite expensive wines. The grapes used for Trockenbeerenauslese have reached an even more raisin-like state than those used for Beerenauslese.

In addition, wines are classified by the Verband Deutscher Prädikatswein (VDP). Top wines are classified according to region and the very best vineyards.

On wine labels, German wine may be classified according to the residual sugar of the wine. Trocken refers to dry wine. These wines have less than 9 grams/liter of residual sugar. These bottles are usually identified by a yellow-coloured capsule. Halbtrocken wines are off-dry and have 9-18 grams/liter of residual sugar. Due to the high acidity ("crispness") of many German wines, the taste profile of many halbtrocken wines fall within the "internationally dry" spectrum rather than being appreciably sweet. "Feinherb" wine are slightly more sweet than halbtrocken wines.

There are also several terms to identify the grower and producers of the wine.

• Weingut refers to a wine producing estate.
• Weinkellerei refers to a winery.
• Winzergenossenschaft refers to a winegrowers' co-operative wine.
• Gutsabfüllung refers to a grower/producer wine that is estate bottled.
• Abfüller refers to a bottler or shipper.

If the suffix "-er" appears after the name of the town, the wine comes from a particular vineyard located in that town.

Regions: Germany's 13 regions for quality wine

The wine regions in Germany usually referred to are the 13 defined regions for quality wine. The German wine industry has organised itself around these regions and their division into districts. However, there are also a number of regions for the seldom-exported table wine (Tafelwein) and country wine (Landwein) categories. Those regions with a few exceptions overlap with the quality wine regions. In order to make a clear distinction between the quality levels, the regions and subregions for different quality level have different names on purpose, even when they are allowed to be produced in the same geographical area.

There are 13 defined regions for quality wine in Germany^[2][7]:

1. Ahr - a small region along the river Ahr, a tributary of Rhine, that despite its northernly location primarily produces red wine from Spätburgunder.

2. Baden - in Germany's southwestern corner, across river Rhine from Alsace, and the only German wine region situated in European Union wine growing zone B rather than A, which results in higher minimum required maturity of grapes and less chaptalisation allowed.^[8] Noted for its pinot wines - both red and white. Although the Kaiserstuhl region in the wine growing region of Baden is Germany's warmest location, the average temperature in the whole wine region is a little bit lower than in Palatinate (zone A). One of two wine regions in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.

3. Franconia or Franken - around portions of Main river, and the only wine region situated in Bavaria. Noted for growing many varieties on chalky soil and for producing powerful dry Silvaner wines.

4. Hessische Bergstraße (Hessian Mountain Road) - a small region in the federal state Hesse dominated by Riesling.

5. Mittelrhein - along the middle portions of river Rhine, primarily between the regions Rheingau and Mosel, and dominated by Riesling.

6. Mosel - along the river Moselle (Mosel) and its tributaries, the rivers Saar and Ruwer, and was previously known as Mosel-Saar-Ruwer. The Mosel region is dominated by Riesling grapes and slate soils, and the best wines are grown in dramatic-looking steep vineyards directly overlooking the rivers. This region produces wine that is light in body, crisp, of high acidity and with pronounced mineral character. The only region to stick to Riesling wine with noticeable residual sweetness as the "standard" style, although dry wines are also produced.

7. Nahe - around the river Nahe where volcanic origins give very varied soils. Mixed grape varieties but the best known producers primarily grow Riesling, and some of them have achieved world reputation in recent years.

8. Palatinate or Pfalz - the second largest producing region in Germany, with production of very varied styles of wine (especially in the southern half), where red wine has been on the increase. The northern half of the region is home to many well known Riesling producers with a long history, which specialize in powerful Riesling wines in a dry style. Warmer than all other German wine regions. Until 1995, it was known in German as Rheinpfalz.^[9]

9. Rheingau - a small region situated at a bend in river Rhine which give excellent conditions for wine growing. The oldest documented references to Riesling come from the Rheingau region^[10] and it is the region where many German wine making practices have originated, such as the use of Prädikat designations, and where many high-profile producers are situated. Dominated by Riesling with some Spätburgunder. The Rheingau Riesling style is in-between Mosel and the Palatinate and other southern regions, and at its finest combines the best aspects of both.

10. Rheinhessen or Rhenish Hesse - the largest production area in Germany. Once known as Liebfraumilch land, but a quality revolution has taken place since the 1990s. Mixed wine styles and both red and white wines. The best Riesling wines are similar to Palatinate Riesling - dry and powerful. Despite its name, it lies in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, not in Hesse.

11. Saale-Unstrut - one of two regions in former East Germany, situated along the rivers Saale and Unstrut, and Germany's northernmost wine growing region.

12. Saxony or Sachsen - one of two regions in former East Germany, in the southeastern corner of the country, along the river Elbe in the federal state of Saxony.

13. Württemberg - a traditional red wine region, where grape varieties Trollinger (the region's signature variety), Schwarzriesling and Lemberger outnumber the varieties that dominate elsewhere. One of two wine regions in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.

These 13 regions (Anbaugebiete) are broken down into 39 districts (Bereiche) which are further broken down into collective vineyard sites (Großlagen) of which there are 167. The individual vineyard sites (Einzellagen) number 2,658.^[11]

 

Bum Hundred: Least Influential People of 2010

(By Joel Stein , Time Magazine, April 2010)

Putting together the most-influential list is easy: The President! Oprah! The President of someplace else! A person who appears on Oprah! And besides being easy journalistic lifting, it's also the best thing you can do for your career: you get to call powerful people and tell them how very powerful you think they are. Not only do you increase your chances of Steve Jobs' calling you back for a quote for your next article, but with journalism going the way it is, it's pretty comforting to know you can e-mail your résumé directly to Han Han.

But making a least-influential list, that's a fool's task — one that only a true journalist, a brave journalist, a handsome journalist would venture. Even the truest, bravest, handsomest journalist, however, has some trouble putting such a list together. First of all, the list I made does not actually consist of the least influential people in the world. Those would be infants, people in comas and North Koreans who aren't Kim Jong Il. And it's not a list of those with the most negative influence: the underwear bomber, that tattooed chick who messed up Sandra Bullock's marriage, Jay Leno. My list is, technically, the Least Influential People Who Used To Or Ought to Have Influence. Which also rules out those who simply had a bad year: Tiger Woods is still immensely influential, only now his influence lies in preventing men from texting their mistresses. None of Tiger's mistresses are on my list either, since they influenced fame-seeking sluts all over to make sure their famous boyfriends text them.

So it was very difficult to fill up a list of 100 uninfluential people. For help, I called news anchor Rick Sanchez, who hosts Rick's List on CNN from 3 to 5 p.m. E.T. I figured that when you're trying to book guests in the afternoon on CNN, you get to talk to some pretty uninfluential people. "Don't shy away from easy pickings," Sanchez advised. "When someone says something dumb, Joel, it's your job to report it." Sanchez airs a segment called "The List You Don't Want to Be On," from which he gave me some names. "A lot of times these guys are famous for 35 seconds," Sanchez said. "I'd never heard of the president of Toyota until he was on the list. I can't even remember his name now." That man's name, by the way, is Toyoda. When someone says something dumb, it is my job to report it.

As Sanchez suggested, I tried to stay away from his first choice in guests — people involved in American politics — and instead focused on publicity hounds such as Heidi Montag, Balloon Boy's mom, the H1N1 virus, Google Buzz and Senator Roland Burris. To give the list structure, I broke it into four categories, just as TIME does for its most-influential list. Only I divided mine into Losers, Flameouts, Morons and Slimy Bastards. The Slimy Bastards section was like the Harvard of the uninfluential, with not nearly enough slots for all the deserving candidates. Sadly, I had to scratch off Rod Blagojevich, who I know is eager to get on any list he can, in order to fit in Levi Johnston, the Kato Kaelin of American politics. Making the Flameouts section, however, was as easy as winning a Rhodes scholarship if you were born in the South: I scrounged to fill it with George Clooney's ex-girlfriend, Carson Daly, 2-D and Bo Obama. Seriously, after all that hype about what breed to pick, the First Dog hasn't written even one book yet.

I leave it to you and the Pulitzer committee to decide which list is better, mine or the one that is taking up 800 pages of this magazine. I will just point out that unlike the most-influential list, which is clogged with foreign names you've never heard of (seriously, "Han Han"?), mine has only 19 foreigners, and that's including Mayor McCheese, who might actually live in the U.S. In fact, there would be only 16 foreigners if I hadn't gotten lost in a Wikipedia hole about the Icelandic financial crisis. And keep in mind that six of the uninfluential have posed completely naked, while the closest the most-influential list gets is Lady Gaga and the tight, transparent, low-cut white T-shirts of Simon Cowell. Also, it should be noted that, percentage-wise, my list is way higher in reptilian humanoids.

TIME should really be throwing a big party for my list instead of its list. I'm sure Han Han is a lot of fun, but if you mix alcohol, deposed world leaders, professional-wrestling referees, Tila Tequila, Paula Abdul, Tom from MySpace and the entire nation of Greece, you're going to need a lot of cops to break it up.

 

LOSERS

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Emir of Dubai
Oh, it's got to hurt to go begging for money from Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi! That's like Trump asking for money from his uncle who put his salary in Vanguard index funds. It's like UAE Smack down.

Google Buzz
Some kind of thing on your computer
Remember when gmail invited you — just you! — to join Google buzz where you could connect all your social networks with your email? Or maybe it was something totally different. All I know is that I already had more things that did that crap than I wanted.

Leonid Tyagachev
Ex-Head of Russian Olympic Committee
Eleventh in gold medals, and none in hockey — despite having Alexander Ovechkin on your team? In the past, someone who performed like this would be banished to Siberia. But they have a pretty good hockey team there right now. So I don't know where they send you now that you quit.

Tom Tom
Car GPS device
Six years ago, these were from the future. Now they come with your phone. I think they sell them now in the discount bins they used to use for Yngwie Malmsteen cassettes.

Space Shuttle
Formerly Cool Vehicle
You know how all these other countries built space shuttles after we did? Well, that's because they didn't. Everyone stuck with rocket ships because rocket ships are cool. Space shuttles are airplanes that don't even go to other countries. Have you ever seen a comic book or a sci-fi movie where the hero goes up in something that looks like a space shuttle? Finally, we're going back to rocket ships.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev
Ex-President of Kyrgyzstan
Bakiyev was barely influential when he was President of Kyrgyzstan, because it's in Kyrgyzstan. But when his massive corruption got him tossed out, he couldn't even get his brother and son out of the country. He gave both the US and Russia bases in your country and even they didn't have his back.

Mamadou Tandja
Ex-President of Niger
Even Bakiyev was able to get out of his country when he got coup d'etated. But Tandja was stuck and arrested in Niger. The best way of telling that you have no influence: You can't even get someone to post a better photo on your Wikipedia page. Not flattering.

Rue McClanahan
Actress
Betty White has usurped all the power from remaining Golden Girls.

Lorelle Young
President of the US Metric Association
He's about 99 kilometers from being influential. Or 99 metrometers. I have no idea how that works.

Manuel Zelaya
Ex-President of Honduras
Another guy who got coup d'etated. He wound up in the Dominican Republic. And, as every baseball fan knows, you don't walk off the Dominican Republic.

Palm Inc
Makers of the Pre phone
Remember when it was cool to have a Treo? And then Palm came out with this well reviewed, awesome new smart phone? Thing is, that was a few years after the iPhone came out.

Gourmet Magazine
Ex-Magazine
The country is obsessed with food, and Gourmet folds after 68 years. Conde Nast would rather keep Bon Appétit, which is a magazine called Bon Appétit.

Professional Wrestling Referees
Dream Job For Weird Kids
So few rules to enforce, and yet, they always fail.

Ueli Maurer
Head of the Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sports, Switzerland
Those are all things Switzerland sucks at.

People in Windows 7 Ads
Actors
Windows 7 was not your idea at all.

Giorgio Napolitano
President of Italy
He makes decisions and Silvio Berlusconi ignores them. It's pretty funny.

Dmitry Medvedev
President of Russia
Yeah, sure he is.

Eskendereya
Former Kentucky Derby front-runner
I know it's hard for horses to keep their calendars up to date, but when you're the front runner to the Kentucky Derby you might not want to do whatever it was you were doing to hurt your leg right before the race. Lame.

Bertha Lewis
President of ACORN
I didn't follow this controversy at all, but I know ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Michael Steele
RNC Chairman
After lavish spending and criticizing Rush Limbaugh — Rush Limbaugh! — many in the party are trying to get rid of him. Even though that would mean losing his blog on GOP.com which, though now untitled, used to be called ""What Up?"

Mark Rosenthal
CEO of Current TV
If someone from MSNBC's The Ed Show caused an international incident in which two reporters were captured by North Korea and had to be freed by a trip from Bill Clinton, at least a few of us would tune in to an episode of the Ed Schultz Show. But no one has still seen that blur-of-short-You-Tube-looking-segments that calls itself Current TV. Al Gore is even worse at starting networks than he is a running for President.

Gil Kerlikowske
Drug Czar
That whole drug czar thing hasn't really worked out.

We Are The World 25 for Haiti
Fund-Raising Song
Wow, that sucked.

Billy Tauzin
CEO of PhRMA, a pharmaceutical company lobby group.
After losing on the health care bill, he's being forced out of his job in June.

Admiral Aranda
Chief Naval Officer of Bolivia
As the website 247WallSt.com said, "Runs Naval Forces of a land-locked country that can't afford a navy. Enough said." I hope the website 2427WallSt.com is right.

 

MORONS

Heidi Montag
Star of MTV's The Hills
You used to be famous for being famous. Then you were famous for getting lots of plastic surgery and selling only 658 copies of your album in its first week. Now you’re not famous. That was fast.

Spencer Pratt
Boyfriend of Star of MTV's The Hills
Montag fired him as her manager. It's like we need a whole other list of the un-influential to the uninfluential.

Paula Abdul
Ex-American Idol Judge
Now you have only yourself to judge. That can't be fun.

Toll Brothers
Homebuilders
That was a lot of McMansions you built. You'll totally get a segment on I Love the 2000s.

James Arthur Ray
Self-help guru
Even if he hadn't kept people in a sweat lodge so long that they died, the sauna is a poor place to motivate people. It's more of a chill-out area.

Desiree Rogers
Former White House Social Secretary
If you had purposely invited one of the Real Housewives of D.C., that would have been influential.

Floyd Landis
Cyclist
Every other cyclist in the last 20 years has gotten away with doping, except for you.

Mayumi Heene
Balloon Boy's mom
Any wife who can't talk her husband out of that plan really has no influence.

Roland Burris
Senator
Still a senator!

Conrad Murray
Michael Jackson's doctor
Not a lot of people in Murray's waiting room right now.

Brian Dunkleman
Former Co-Host of American Idol
After quitting Idol after the first season, Dunkleman is now doing voice work playing Ruiga in Naruto.

Julius Malema
President of South Africa's African National Congress Youth League.
Malema is just like Joe Biden, if instead of innocuous, silly slipups, Biden delivered violent, racist misogynist rants. It got so bad he's been censured by his party and convicted of hate speech. So he just said violent things about the party.

Joaquin Phoenix
Actor
That weird Andy Kauffman-esque thing where you filmed yourself pretending to rap badly? Even if you made a great documentary about it, I'm not seeing it. In fact, deep down, I'm pretty sure you were really just trying to rap.

Lyndon LaRouche
Political Extremist
After eight tries, it's time to give up the running-for-President thing. You're starting to seem like Ralph Nader.

Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court Justice
Still hasn't talked from the bench. Not sure he's even paying attention.

Matthew Balan
Contributor, NewsBusters
Rick Sanchez told me to put him on because they got in a fight about whether Sanchez was serious or kidding about being surprised volcanoes exist in cold places like Iceland. I forgot to ask Rick what category he thinks Balan should go in, but I was short on morons so I put him here.

Selma
Ex-Lead Technician at the Clinic in Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew on VH1
When you're fired for getting in a fight with Kari Ann Peniche (the woman who was naked in that video with Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart), the woman who was herself thrown out of both VH1's Sober House and VH1's Sex Rehab, you are not highly valued.

Carrie Prejean
Former Miss California
Two things you can't do: 1) Make a sex tape after talking about how immoral gay people are; 2) Make a sex tape without any sex in it.

Nadya Suleman
Octomom
No one really cares anymore.

Shanmugam Kumaran Tharmalingam
Ex-Rebel Leader
After 33 years of trying to separate from Sri Lanka, your Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were defeated. Then you got arrested. Now I'll go visit Sri Lanka.

Tom Leykis
Radio Host
The misogynist shock jock lost his radio show when his L.A. station changed from all-talk to all-Lady Gaga. Now, once a week, he has a show where he talks about wine where his chance of becoming Robert Parker is about the same as his chance of getting sommeliers to show him their boobs.

Apple Employee Who Left the New iPhone Prototype at A Bar
Heavy Drinker
He's not being given a lot of responsibility at work right now.

David Shuster
Ex-MSNBC reporter
Shooting a pilot for a rival network (CNN) without asking your bosses is a pretty easy way to get suspended. Also, you should have shot a better pilot.

David Paterson
NY Governor
A year after Eliot Spitzer got caught with a hooker, and everyone likes Spitzer better. The President flew to meet you just to tell you to give up the governor race. And you said no. Now you literally have less power in the party than Spitzer.

 

FLAMEOUTS

Chris Dodd
Connecticut Senator
When they ran for President in 2008, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden were exactly equal in power: two domestically liberal, foreign policy conservative wonks who couldn't get a vote despite being well qualified. Now Biden is veep and Dodd will give up his Senate seat before he looses it due to some sweet deals he got from the banks he was committee-ing.

Bo Obama
First Dog
No book telling us to exercise or eat leafy greens? No hilarious video of chasing a squirrel to distract us from the fact that our unemployment benefits are almost up? After all that talk about what breed of dog to buy, the family decided to go with Total Loser?

H1N1
Virus
I got a shot for this loser! I made my baby get a shot! This was the biggest loser epidemic since bird flu. Or SARS. I bet H1N1 never even killed a pig. I've eaten about 3 pigs this week and I'm not technically a virus.

Sleestaks
Fictional Creatures from Land of the Lost
You guys bought Escalades with pimped out rims and Beverly Hills homes thinking you'd finally made it. Then Land of the Lost with Will Ferrell bombed and your big-eyed, giant scaly heads realized your one chance was gone.

Patrick Kennedy
Congressman
I like this guy, but it's all over for him now.

Sarah Larson
George Clooney's Ex-Girlfriend
While dating George Clooney, People named you as one of their most beautiful people. Now try getting People to call you back. They're not really your friend, Sarah.

Kindle Owners
Too-Early Adapters
Do you use them as coasters? Or to bash iPad users over the head with frustration?

Carson Daly
Talk show host
Really. He is. He has a show on NBC. It comes on right after Jimmy Fallon. He was given the show eight years ago so he could practice in obscurity before he took over for Conan. The show has offices and everything.

The Doors
Classic Rock band
We've all decided that they actually sucked and just had a handsome lead singer.

Rick Wagoner
Former Head of General Motors
It's one thing to get fired by your board. But you got fired by the Federal government; 300 million of us gave you a pink slip.

RU Sirius
Writer
In the 1990s, everyone wanted to hear from this guy about cyberculture. It was an innocent time where we knew so little about the internet we had to listen to people even if they called themselves RU Sirius.

Grover
Muppet
Elmo is taking all your airtime, yo.

Taipei 101
Ex-tallest building in the world
On January 4, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai made the Taipei 101 irrelevant. You think little boys read the Guinness Book of World Records and ask their dads: "One day, do you think I can go to the top of the second tallest building in the world?"

Dan Rather
Anchor
...on HDNet. I don't know what that is or why it's still so proud of being in HD, but this is not retiring gracefully. This is like if Michael Jordan came back now and played for HDNet.

Katie Couric
Network Anchor
She keeps showing up. You have to admire that.

Tom DeLay
Former Congressman
Not sure what kind of career he was trying to jumpstart by appearing on Dancing With The Stars, but camp-loving gay men don't like a quitter.

Carrot Top
Comedian
All that success, and yet he hasn't spawned a generation of prop comedians.

Yves Leterme
Former Prime Minister of Belgium
Yes, I know the Belgians speak three different languages, but, really, when the prime minister can't keep Belgium together as a nation, he's not all that influential.

Witches
Practioners of Magic
Charmed was, like, 10 years ago. It's all vampires, werewolves and zombies now.

Any mother of any eighth grade girl
Parent
You'll regain influence in a few years, moms.

General Larry Platt
Singer/songwriter
"Pants on the Ground" has not stopped one kid from wearing his pants on the ground.

Mayor McCheese
Mayor
"I'm not aware of his stance on a single issue." — Ross Autry, personal advisor to this project on Facebook, where I asked for help from anyone. Hey, 100 is a lot of people.

2D
Out-dated technology
This is the sole reason I haven't seen Greenberg yet.

Stedman Graham
Oprah's Boyfriend
Everyone else who knows Oprah has their own show by now.

Christie Hefner
Former CEO of Playboy
She couldn't get her dad to leave the expensive mansion; he got a hit TV show on E!; she quit. Lesson: Never try to remove your parents from their house.

 

SLIMY BASTARDS

John Edwards
Former Presidential Candidate
He already was irrelevant, then he allowed news of an affair and love child to come out so slowly, we forgot he was already irrelevant.

Eric Massa
Ex- Congressman
It's hard to be influential when you have no clue how the world works. You don't explain how ungay you are by saying that you just were having tickle fights with the guys you live with, like you did when you were in the Navy. Liberace was more subtle.

Tom Anderson
Founder of, and everyone's friend on, MySpace
Have you clicked on MySpace lately? It's like you wandered into some section of Las Vegas so seedy it should be in Tampa. You can get venereal diseases just from logging on.

Jon Gosselin
Ex-Reality Dad
We once thought he was the henpecked husband of a crazy chick. Now we love the henpecker. Killing the Ed Hardy trend was the last influence you'll ever have.

Lindsay Lohan
Actress
Things are not good when you're suing babies.

Michael Lohan
Lindsay Lohan's dad
He's engaged to Jon Gosselin's ex-girlfriend.

Mark Sanford
Governor of South Carolina
Before he "hiked the Appalachian trail" with an Argentinean journalist, the still-sitting governor of South Carolina was a top contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Now he's going to enter the private sector. A sector so private, a man can go on a fake hiking trip alone and no one will care.

Angelina Pivarnick
Reality Washout
To get kicked off of MTV's Jersey Shore is an accomplishment, but not one that gets you on the next season of Jersey Shore.

Björgólfur Gudmundsson
Former owner and chairman of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki
Iceland's second billionaire ever — the first was his son, Thor Björgólfsson (in Iceland, your last name is just your dad's first name plus either sson or dottir) — he went from being worth $1.1 billion to $0. And he's being investigated. And he destroyed his country's economy. And Gordon Brown used anti-terrorist laws to freeze Landsbanki's U.K. holdings. And he named his bank Landsbanki. The British hate him more than they hate his country's volcanoes.

Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson
Icelandic Businessman
When you're a good-looking dude who sells clothing, you have to really screw up to have people protest in the streets against you. And for your ex-mistress to talk about your sex life during an accounting trial. Anyway, no one is lending him money now. Not even in krona.

Hreidar Már Sigurdsson
Former head of the failed Icelandic band Kaupthing
I kind of went down a Wikipedia hole with the Icelandic financial crisis.

Bernie Madoff
Wall Street fraud, Prisoner #61727-054
Prisoners won't even invest their cigarettes with him.

Levi Johnston
Actor, model, baby daddy
Who knew American politics needed its own Kato Kaelin.

Greece
European Country
Hairy chested, aggressive with women, charmingly backward — you briefly charmed us with that big, fat wedding. Then you spent so much more money than you made you forced the EU to bail you out. It will be a long time before we watch a movie about you again.

Angelo R. Mozilo
Ex-CEO of Countrywide Financial
He came in second on Portfolio magazine's list of "Worst American CEOs of All Time," right after Dick Fuld. Also hard to put on a resume under awards and obnoxious magazine lists. Plus now he has to list this one.

Portfolio Magazine
Former business magazine that never really took off
And now it's a website. Which, really, is sadder than not existing at all.

Joe Cassano
Former AIG exec
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi named him "Patient Zero" of the global economic meltdown. TIME magazine's Joel Stein called him "a big fat nunny pants." One of those is going to stick.

Jim Gibbons
Governor of Nevada
He had a 10% approval rating. He had too many scandals for Nevada to handle.

John Ensign
Nevada Senator
His sex scandal is so confusing — he gave a job to the husband of the woman he was cheating on his wife with (I think) — that it's taking forever for him to be thrown out of office.

Shelia Dixon
Ex-Mayor of Baltimore
You have to be a pretty corrupt politician in Baltimore to impress us after watching The Wire. But with just one year to serve as mayor after being appointed when the previous mayor became governor, Dixon was found guilty of misappropriating gift cards meant for the poor. As if gift cards in and of themselves weren't enough of a racket.

Jamie McCourt
Dodger's sort-of, maybe owner
Due to an ugly divorce case (she may have slept with both her chauffeur and, awesomely, the team's director of protocol) the former CEO of the L.A. Dodgers and ex-wife of owner Frank McCourt has been thrown out of the organization. But I'm sure her fantasy league team is very influential.

Tila Tequila
I Have No Idea
I could tell you that Tila Nguyen changed her name to Miss Tila, that she released sonogram pictures of her baby to radar online or that her new single is called "I Fucked the DJ." All of which you'd never know if I didn't just write it. But the only data point I need, I believe, is this, from Wikipedia: "In December 2009, Nguyen partnered with Joe Francis to launch a dating site called 'TilasHotSpotDating.com'.

Jack Abramoff
Lobbiest
He is only in prison until December, so it's got to be hard organizing long-term sports gambling there.

Nicolette Sheridan
Actress
The other, non-fired Desperate Housewives don't have her back in her lawsuits against the show's creator.

Dick Fuld
The Last CEO of Lehman Brothers ever
That has to be hard to explain on a resume.

Find this article at:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1985389_1985284,00.html

 

James Bond Trivia

  From Batman Bond To That $50,000 Bikini To … Kitty Galore?!

(By Kimberly Potts, Movies.com website)

1. The first big-screen James Bond movie may have been 1962's Dr. No, but Bond's first screen appearance was in a 1954 CBS TV movie adaptation of Casino Royale.  

2. The character was called "Jimmy Bond" — and was played by actor Barry Nelson.

3. Bond author Ian Fleming is best known for his super spy series, but he also wrote the book that became the Dick Van Dyke movie classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

4. Bond was named after an American bird scientist who wrote a book that obsessive bird watcher Fleming kept in his home. He said he chose the name because it sounded so ordinary. 

5. In Fleming's novels, he described Bond as looking like scrawny, craggy Stardust composer Hoagy Charmichael.

6. Fleming was initially against the casting of Sean Connery. He called him a "snorting lorry driver."

7. Five years after leaving the Bond movie series in a money dispute, Connery returned for 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, with a $1.25 million salary and 10% of the gross, a payday that put him in the Guinness Book of Records.

8. When Connery's eventual Bond replacement, George Lazenby, showed up for a casting meeting with producer Albert R. Broccoli and company, he was actually wearing one of Connery's suits. Connery had forgotten to pick it up from the tailor, and it was sold to car salesman/male model-turned-actor Lazenby. 

9. Avengers star Diana Rigg played James Bond's only wife, Tracy, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She and Lazenby clashed so much that a couple of weeks after the movie's opening, they sniped at each other in a series of newspaper interviews.

10. When Broccoli and his fellow producers had to replace Connery again after Diamonds Are Forever, they toyed with the idea of eschewing actors altogether and hiring a military man to play 007 instead. They even went as far as putting casting call ads in military magazines, but changed their plans when Equity, the British actors union, objected.

11. Though movie Bond has become famous for his constant stash of cool gadgets, the first 007 flick, Dr. No, had Connery's Bond getting his spy groove on with nothing more than  a Geiger counter and a (mildly) souped-up watch.

12. In an initial treatment for the Dr. No script, the writers changed Fleming's book storyline to create a new villain who carried a pet monkey with him everywhere. The monkey was named Dr. No, which prompted Bond producer Broccoli to reject it and demand a rewrite.

13. Goldfinger (1964) was the first 007 movie where the cars were a co-star, including the famous Aston Martin DB5.

14. Then-Beatle Paul McCartney bought a Goldfinger Aston Martin for himself immediately after seeing the movie, telling an interviewer, "I'm quite a James Bond fan, you know." 

15. Original Bond girl Ursula Andress, whose emergence from the water in her teeny white bikini is one of the all-time most memorable movie scenes, was cast as Honey Ryder in Dr. No after producer Harry Saltzman saw a photo of her in a wet T-shirt.

16. Andress' famous bikini sold for more than $50,000 to Planet Hollywood owner Robert Earl in 2001.

17. Goldfinger bad girl Pussy Galore was named after a 1950s madam in Saratoga, N.Y. Producers toyed with the idea of changing the suggestive name to Kitty Galore, but when actress Honor Blackman was photographed with England's Prince Philip at a movie premiere, a newspaper captioned the photo "Pussy and the Prince," and producers decided that meant the public would accept the name.

18. When Live and Let Die (1973) was released in South Africa, the love scenes between  newbie Bond Roger Moore and African-American actress Gloria Hendry (playing Bond girl Rosie Carver) had to be cut because the apartheid government prohibited interracial affairs.

19. The Bond movies make up the second most successful movie franchise in history, after Star Wars.

20. The last Bond movie, 2002's Die Another Day starring Pierce Brosnan, is the most successful 007 flick of all time, earning more than $450 million in worldwide box office revenue.

21. The search to replace Brosnan for Casino Royale reportedly resulted in a list of 200 contenders, including Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Eric Bana and Julian McMahon.

22. Among the actors who were offered the role of James Bond through the years but turned it down are: James Brolin, Burt Reynolds and Batman TV star Adam West.

23. Casino Royale's Daniel Craig is the youngest Bond ever — at 38, younger than the series itself.

24. Craig told Premiere magazine that he was in a Whole Foods grocery store in Baltimore when he got the call from Bond producer Barbara Broccoli in which she officially told him he would be the next James Bond. "I think the story's rather sad that I wasn't on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean," Craig says. "I was in a f---in' Whole Foods." 

25. Hate-filled craignotbond.com (now offline) is just one of several websites that fiercely have objected to the casting of blond Bond Craig.

26. After Casino Royale's big poker game, the movie's final act features a torture scene in which Bond, captured by his nemesis Le Chiffre, finds himself, and his, uh, little James Bond, in a precarious position, as he's strapped to a chair with a hole cut in the bottom. "From that moment on, when I sit in that chair, I'm hanging out from under there, or at least - you know, I'm not giving myself that much praise, but it's definitely down there," says Craig.

27. MGM planned the first ever Bond movie spin-off, featuring Halle Berry's Die Another Day character Jinx, in 2003. But when female action flicks like the Tomb Raider sequel flopped, the studio made Casino Royale instead.

28. Bond girls have had somewhat of a "pinup" reputation all along, but ever since Halle Berry's Die Another Day performance, the franchise has been courting Oscar-winning actresses. Both Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were approached for the role of Casino Royale's Vesper Lynd before Eva Green signed on. 

29. Fleming, like James Bond, counts scrambled eggs as one of his favorite dishes. He even included the recipe for making Bond's favorite eggs in a 007 short story.

30. Did you know there's a James Bond Jr.? He's not 007's son, but his teen-age nephew, who starred in a short-lived syndicated cartoon in 1991. Jr. was a British prep school student who hung out with I.Q., Q's gadget-happy grandson, and Gordo Leiter, son of Felix.  31. Jr.'s catchphrase? "Bond, James Bond … Junior."

32. Fleming himself was an officer in the Naval Intelligence Division, and even claimed that the casino storyline in Casino Royale was inspired by an experience he had during a World War II trip to Lisbon.

33. Blofeld's volcano lair for You Only Live Twice cost more to build than the entire budget for Dr. No.

34. 1979's Moonraker replaced For Your Eyes Only as the post-The Spy Who Loved Me Bond flick because producers wanted to cash in on the recent popularity of Star Wars by sending 007 into space.

35. Sheena Easton performed the Oscar-nominated theme song for For Your Eyes Only, but she was the producers' second choice. Blondie originally wrote and recorded a theme song, but producers rejected it, and Blondie's For Your Eyes Only was relegated to the band's 1982 album The Hunter.

36. Duran Duran's A View to a Kill theme song is the only 007 theme to reach #1 on the U.S. pop music charts.

37. Welsh singer Shirley Bassey is the only singer to have recorded more than one Bond movie theme, performing the title tracks for 1964's Goldfinger, 1971's Diamonds Are Forever and 1979's Moonraker.

38. Casino Royale's song, You Know My Name, is performed by Audioslave and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.

39. 1983's Octopussy was the 13th "official" Bond movie, produced by Cubby Broccoli's EON Productions. It was released in the same year as Never Say Never Again, the "unofficial" Bond flick that featured the return of Sean Connery to the 007 role. Never, a remake of 1965's Thunderball, is considered an unofficial Bond movie because it wasn't a Broccoli production.

40. The 22nd movie in the 007 franchise, known by the working title Bond 22, is already scheduled for release on Nov. 7, 2008, with Craig returning in the title role.

Movie	Title	Year	Actor	Director	Total Box Office	Budget
#					(Worldwide)
1	Dr. No	1962	Sean Connery	Terence Young	$59,600,000	$1,000,000
2	From Russia with Love	1963	Sean Connery	Terence Young	$78,900,000	$2,500,000
3	Goldfinger	1964	Sean Connery	Guy Hamilton	$124,900,000	$3,500,000
4	Thunderball	1965	Sean Connery	Terence Young	$141,200,000	$11,000,000
5	You Only Live Twice	1967	Sean Connery	Lewis Gilbert	$111,600,000	$9,500,000
A	Casino Royale	1967	David Niven	Lewis Gilbert	$44,400,000	$12,000,000
6	On Her Majesty's Secret Service	1969	George Lazenby	Peter R. Hunt	$87,400,000	$7,000,000
7	Diamonds Are Forever	1971	Sean Connery	Guy Hamilton	$116,000,000	$7,200,000
8	Live and Let Die	1973	Roger Moore	Guy Hamilton	$161,800,000	$7,000,000
9	The Man with the Golden Gun	1974	Roger Moore	Guy Hamilton	$97,600,000	$7,000,000
10	The Spy Who Loved Me	1977	Roger Moore	Lewis Gilbert	$185,400,000	$14,000,000
11	Moonraker	1979	Roger Moore	Lewis Gilbert	$210,300,000	$34,000,000
12	For Your Eyes Only	1981	Roger Moore	John Glen	$195,300,000	$28,000,000
13	Octopussy	1983	Roger Moore	John Glen	$187,500,000	$27,500,000
B	Never Say Never Again	1983	Sean Connery	John Glen	$160,000,000	$36,000,000
14	A View to a Kill	1985	Roger Moore	John Glen	$152,400,000	$30,000,000
15	The Living Daylights	1987	Timothy Dalton	John Glen	$191,200,000	$40,000,000
16	Licence to Kill	1989	Timothy Dalton	John Glen	$156,200,000	$42,000,000
17	GoldenEye	1995	Pierce Brosnan	Martin Campbell	$353,400,000	$60,000,000
18	Tomorrow Never Dies	1997	Pierce Brosnan	Roger Spottiswoode	$346,600,000	$110,000,000
19	The World Is Not Enough	1999	Pierce Brosnan	Michael Apted	$390,000,000	$135,000,000
20	Die Another Day	2002	Pierce Brosnan	Lee Tamahori	$456,000,000	$142,000,000
21	Casino Royale	2006	Daniel Craig	Martin Campbell	$594,293,106	$150,000,000
22	Quantum of Solace	2008	Daniel Craig	Marc Forster	$321,857,447	$230,000,000
					$4,397,593,106	$1,098,000,000