A couple of weeks ago, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi slagged the cuisine of Finland. Then yesterday French President Jacques Chirac told Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin that Britain has the worst food in Europe except for Finland’s, saying mad cow disease is Britain’s sole contribution to European agriculture. Funny, he didn’t mention a single contribution Finland has made. So far President Bush has kept out of this discussion, probably a good thing since the White House web site features such gourmet recipes as Baked Potato Soup, Deviled Eggs, Fourth of July Coq Au Vin (a favorite Freedom recipe), and Secretary Tommy Thompson’s “Bratwurst of Liberty,” which includes the complex cooking instructions: “Grill them on the BBQ, place in a bun, top with your favorite condiments, and enjoy!” Bon appétit.

Researchers at England’s Bath University Pain Management Unit say that in spite of the conventional wisdom that men are simpering pain wimps who won’t suffer in silence, it turns out they actually cope with pain better than women because they don’t get so emotional about it. Unfortunately they rarely get the medical treatment they need because they refuse to stop and ask for directions to the doctor’s office.

British cell phone users can now waste — I mean, while — away their time by playing Etch-A-Sketch on their phone. They use two keys instead of dials to draw pictures on their cell phone, then they can save the drawings or press “0” to erase them without having to turn the phone upside down and shake it. Coming soon will be the ability to play Mr. Potato Head, use the phone like a virtual hula hoop, and create an ant farm Uncle Milton would be proud of.

A Japanese psychiatric counselor broke his own record when he recited pi to 83,431 decimal places on Friday. He started in the morning, then had to start over at noon when he got lost at about the 16,000 decimal place point. We all know how annoying that can be. He started back at the beginning — you know, the 3.14 part — and finished 11 hours later. And to think, I have trouble remembering my social security number.

NASA, in an effort to stave off criticism about being accident prone, is deliberately sending a spacecraft called Deep Impact 120,842,654 miles to slam into the comet Tempel 1 while going 23,000 miles per hour. I sure hope they don’t miss.

The British government has put out a series of anti-cigarette ads that say smoking is bad for your sex life because it makes men impotent and women ugly. The ads claim smoking “means you can’t get it up” and that it ages women’s skin, causing “cat’s bum mouth,” whatever that is. They should consider recruiting Sam, the three-time winner of the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest (left, real photo. Well, mostly.) as their poster dog and bag the cat’s bum stuff. Next to Sam a cat’s bum doesn’t look half bad.