BEST OF THE WEEK

A German artist is in trouble for making a garden gnome that satirically gives a Nazi salute. I don’t think that’s a big deal, but I do have trouble with the way the gnome keeps satirically invading Poland.

The city of Des Moines, Iowa might finally legalize dancing after 2 a.m. Yes, Des Moines, soon you’ll be almost as exciting as Omaha! Residents of Des Moines were mostly unaware of the law, because until last week, no one there had stayed up past 2 a.m.

The state of Tennessee is voting to make it legal to carry guns in restaurants. In other news, experts predict that Tennessee will soon have the best wait service in the country.

Yesterday, scientists said two glasses of wine a day might prevent dementia. And a few days ago, they said the same about five cups of coffee. However, today scientists realized that the actual cause was just having to pee a lot.

Hackers revealed that Twitter believes it will have a billion users by 2013. Twitter figured this out from a completely separate report predicting that in 2013, the world will have over a billion celebrities. Also by 2013, the most common Twitter message is expected to be: “I’m reading Twitter.”

There’s been an increase in new homes being built, mainly because of rising sales for the Amana refrigerator company. These days, their boxes are considered home construction.

Some laid-off French auto workers have threatened to blow up their old factory. But then they found out the company wanted it blown up. So now the laid-off workers want to be paid to do it. They’re going to wait a day though, because that’s their government-mandated vacation time.

The number of new unemployment claims dropped last week, but only if you use “seasonally adjusted figures”. If you use what is known as “reality”, then the claims continued to rise. For example, if you use seasonally adjusted figures, I’m getting laid all the time! But if you use crude unsophisticated “reality”, I’m still a virgin.

In Germany, a man tried to fill his air mattress and ended up blowing up his apartment. At least, they thought it was an air mattress until they found the plastic nipples. Apparently he likes his “women” extra husky.

In South Africa, a bank put pepper spray in ATMs to prevent the machines from being robbed. However, they’ve been malfunctioning, leading to an increase in muggings while customers lie on the floor holding their eyes in agony.

The government says the average price of food has been dropping across the country. But much of that can be blamed on the collapsed real estate market for gingerbread houses.

A new study says having a lower IQ raises the risk of heart disease, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

A white supremacist on the run from the FBI has now been found -- in Israel. Is he aware of who lives in Israel? I guess he decided to go where no one would suspect. Like Rush Limbaugh would move to San Francisco. Or Jessica Simpson would hide out at the Julliard School of Music.

Cyber-crime experts now say that Internet criminals are acting more and more like MBAs. Actually, considering what we’ve seen over the past few years, they probably are MBAs.

The country of Turkey is banning smoking in all public places. It’s part of their winter anti-smoking tourism campaign: “Come quit smoking cold Turkey!”

A new study says you can tell what someone is typing on a computer just by checking the electricity going into the wall. For example, if there’s no electricity going into the wall, then the person is probably not typing.

A new study by pain researchers shows that swearing can reduce pain. During the study, when volunteers swore at the researchers, the researchers were less likely to hurt them.