VBVW for April 6, 2007:
Waterworld

• The Very Best

Michael Phelps set five world swimming records in five days, apparently without the help of steroids. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the rumors and accusations start. Plus, we hear that his mother slept with Aquaman.

The French unveiled a new high speed train that has reached a speed of 357 mph. By contrast, most U.S. high speed trains barely crack 60 mph. Running full-out, the French train would hypothetically make it from New York to Boston in half an hour. Currently, Amtrak and its crapo-motives take nearly four hours to do the same run. Cars on crowded I-95 do it in less than three.

A team of quantum physicists have shown it’s possible to store a bit of data on a single atom. Their work was published in this week’s Nature Nanotechnology, known for its naked fold-outs of Max Planck. A bit is not much data, you say. Well, just how much room do you think an atom takes up? Ballistic anisotropic magnetoresistance steals the spotlight — again.

• The Very Worst

The White House blasted speaker Nancy Pelosi for attempting diplomatic measures with Syria’s president — then quickly shuffled a Republican congressman off to Damascus to do the same. The administration’s policy to date has been to isolate Syria (since we are so well loved in the Middle East, we can afford to ice those guys out). We have to ask both Bush and Pelosi: Whatever happened to the ol’ “politics stops at the water’s edge” thing?

Global warming used to be a prediction, but scientists this week provided a detailed report to the UN of how smokestack and tailpipe emissions are already turning our atmosphere into a planetary pressure cooker. The report comes in the same week that a congressional committee grilled an oil lobbyist who was hired by the White House to review and “soften” government documents concerning climate change.

The Sea Diamond cruise ship sank near the Greek island of Santorini after striking a reef. Now it is a reef. Of the 1560 passengers and crew on the $78 million cruiser, 1558 were safely evacuated. At VBVW press time, divers were still searching for a missing French man and his daughter.