by Ian Punnett

Have you seen Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” yet?  I would not recommend it to everybody--certainly not for people who abhor movie violence or people who are sticklers for history--but as a cinema experience, it sure had its high points such as the German actor that plays the antagonist Nazi who is as good as everybody says he is.  

One of the low points for me was Brad Pitt’s truly weird, cartoonish Southern accent which I found as distracting as the way he kept sticking out his chin.  It’s not that I was expecting geographical or historical authenticity from “Inglorious Basterds,” it’s that I was never sure when the movie would leave the familiar and enter the “Tarantino zone” (which is similar to the Twilight Zone except everybody talks faster and wittier than real life).

Anyway, as long as we’re rewriting history for our own amusement, then you absolutely have to see the video titled, “Hitler Upset Vikings Sign Brett Favre.”  It is laugh out loud one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

fm1071.com/show_elements/link.php?entryI...

For non-football, non-Viking fans, by the way, “Helga hats” are the ones that Vikings fans wear that makes them look like they’ve got long blond, Scandahoovian braids.  “Helga hats” are like “cheesehead” hats for Vikings fans except we look and feel much prettier.  

Anyway, you don’t have to know much about either Hitler, Brett Favre or football to think this video is funny but it helps.

Boy, let’s hope the Dutch have a sense of humor these days:

An investigation by the Dutch national museum has revealed that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts, is nothing more than a lump of petrified wood. The rock was originally given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees by then-U.S. ambassador J. William Middendorf during a visit by the astronauts shortly after their 1969 moon landing. A spokesperson said the museum will keep the piece anyway, as a curiosity.  (C2C)

The museum will keep the lump of petrified wood that they thought were told was a moon rock as a “curiosity.”  Yeah, just look for that in the exhibit titled, “Crappy gifts we got from other countries.”  

I’m not sure what the diplomatic response will be for that. Ask them to send it back? Replace it with a real one?  Send a letter saying that NASA is going to start an immediate investigation as to how petrified wood got on the moon?

Got to think fast if you’re in politics. Just consider this story:

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They're not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to "direct the national response to the cyber threat" if necessary for "the national defense and security." The White House is supposed to engage in "periodic mapping" of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies "shall share" requested information with the federal government.   (C-Net)

I guess this isn’t much different from other emergency powers that the POTUS has but those rules sound pretty vague and the potential for abuse seems fairly large.  Contact your representative--unless it’s Jay Rockefeller.  Then I wouldn’t bother.

And while that would be painful, it’s not dental pain. There is nothing like dental pain.

I believe in going green as long as green isn’t the color of my teeth. Now, some scientists are coming after the nitrous oxide that allows a dentalphobe like myself from coming within 500 yards of a dentist office.  If researchers are claiming that my nitrous oxide is a threat to the environment, will the politicians be far behind?

A study published today in Science claims that nitrous oxide is the leading cause of ozone layer destruction in the twenty-first century:

“Nitrous oxide is emitted from livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and certain other industrial processes. Dentists use it as a sedative (so-called "laughing gas"). In nature, bacteria in soil and the oceans break down nitrogen-containing compounds, releasing nitrous oxide. About one-third of global nitrous oxide emissions are from human activities. Nitrous oxide, like chlorofluorocarbons, is stable when emitted at ground level, but breaks down when it reaches the stratosphere to form other gases, called nitrogen oxides, that trigger ozone-destroying reactions.”

How is this possible?  I breath in nitrous oxide but I don’t breath it out, do I?  Aren’t dental patients living, breathing nitrous oxide filters?

“They” may take away my internet but, I promise you, if “they” want my nitrous oxide they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead (asleep) hand.

Or at least, the cold dead hand of my dentist.  That I would be willing to promise you (don't tell him).