VBVW for January 25, 2008: Sinking Stocks & Sinking Ships
• The Very Best
Google.org has announced the first five initiatives in its long-term strategy to pursue philanthropic causes using googols of Google money. If they can digitize the world, maybe they can save it, too.
Dennis Kucinich and Fred Thompson both dropped out of the presidential race, allowing male U.S. voters to once again focus on the issues, and not on how obscenely hot these guys’ trophy wives are.
A group of scientists accomplished the first step towards creating man-made life by building the genome of a bacterium from basic chemical components. While the reality of man taking over God’s job is still years away, the ethical debate is sure to create the biggest fireworks display since the Big Bang.
• The Very Worst
At a time when banks around the Western world are reeling from the one-two punch of a credit crisis and a spiraling economy, France’s Societe Generale bank has been badly burned by one of its own. A fraud scheme by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel, 31, has socked SocGen with $7.1 billion in losses, constituting the biggest trade scandal in history.
Palestinians have been flooding into Egypt after militants blew up a wall that separated Gaza from the Land of the Pharoahs. But the Egyptian military is confining the Palestinians to one town, proving once and for all that other Arab nations don’t want the Palestinians any more than the Israelis do.
The cargo ship Ice Prince sunk in the English Channel last week. This week, its motherlode–5,258 tons of cut lumber–washed up on the beach in West Essex, creating mountains of timber covering 10 miles of beach. It looks like enough wood to build and stock three Home Depots.
VBVW for January 18, 2008: Black And Blue
• The Very Best
Scientists believe they have created the first perfectly black material known to man. Made of sheets of carbon just one atom thick, this super-black material absorbs light completely and is expected to have applications in solar energy and electronics. To the surprise of many, the “darkest ever” substance was not harvested from Dick Cheney’s soul.
All 136 passengers and 16 crewmembers survived when British Airways flight 038 crash-landed at Heathrow on its way home from Beijing. When all the power blinked out, the pilot glided the plane in for a bumpy landing.
Researchers have isolated the cell that leads to childhood leukemia, thanks to studies on a pair of 4-year-old twins from southeast England (one has leukemia, the other does not). Next time you bump into twins Isabella and Olivia Murphy, say thanks.
• The Very Worst
When asked about lobbyists in his campaign, Mitt Romney told a reporter that he had no lobbyists associated with his campaign. When it was pointed out that Ron Kaufman, one of Romney’s top advisors, is a registered lobbyist, Romney and a press aide tried to shut down the reporter for being “argumentative.” Jeez, can’t candidates lie with a smile anymore?
The very worst is not over for US banks heavily invested in subprime mortgages. This week, Merrill Lynch reported the worst quarter in its history with $16 billion in write-down losses, meaning their properties lost that much value, and Citibank reported a gigundo $18.1 billion write-down. How much is that? If you counted a dollar a second, starting right now, it would take you 570 years to count to 18 billion.
Fundamentalist Muslims are flocking to an Afghanistan cemetery where victims of the the United State’s “war on terror” are considered martyrs with miraculous powers. Hundreds of people visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily amid claims that these martyrs have cured the faithful of their diseases. Talk about counter-productive: maybe it’s time the U.S. started educating these people instead of bombing them.
VBVW for January 11, 2008: Driven To Tears
• The Very Best
A 15-year old Boy Scout foiled an assassination attempt on the president of the Maldives. Mohammed Jaisham Ibrahim grabbed the blade of an attacker’s knife as it was being thrust at President Maumoon Gayoom. The would-be assassin was subdued — and all of a sudden that whole Webelo-Eagle Scout thing doesn’t seem quite so dorky as it used to.
The Tata Nano, a production car from India’s Tata Motors, debuts at the remarkable price of $2,500 dollars. Officially the world’s cheapest car, the cost for the entire vehicle is a fraction of the interest payment on a GM Hummer.
Bucking for an early ‘08 Darwin Award, a man in Grand Rapids, MI, stabbed himself in the abdomen. He was shoplifting $300 worth of hunting knives by hiding them in his pants, and he tripped.
• The Very Worst
A British study ranked 19 industrialized nations according to how effectively their healthcare systems prevent deaths due to treatable diseases. The U.S. ranked dead last. The study concludes there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the U.S. if our healthcare system performed as well as that of France, Japan, or Australia.
Smog and smoke resulting from a controlled brush fire resulted in a 70-vehicle pileup in Florida in which four people were killed. Turns out that similar “controlled burns” by state officials have resulted in highway closings and accidents in years past. Apparently Florida is sick and tired of California getting all the out-of-control fire attention and has taken matters into its own hands.
When a New York City man’s 66-year-old roommate died, he and a friend propped the body up in an office chair and wheeled it down the street to collect the corpse’s Social Security check. He got stiffed when a detective enjoying a sandwich saw the “Weekend at Bernie’s” party rolling by.
VBVW for January 4, 2008: The Future Awaits
• The Very Best
Barack Obama, a black male, placed first in the Democratic caucus held in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state. Yes, we had to read it twice, too.
A window-washer who plummeted 47 stories from a New York skyscraper is now awake, talking, and expected to walk again. Alcides Moreno may have survived his 500-foot fall by clinging to his platform as the scaffolding beneath him collapsed. All other New Yorkers find scaffolding annoying when it’s upright.
Sony BMG Music has announced plans to release songs without copyright protection software that prevents it from being downloaded. Sony is the last major label to untie the reins on digital rights management and accept the Internet as a marketplace. Welcome to 1999, fellas.
• The Very Worst
Residents of two upstate New York towns have filed suit against IBM, claiming the company released cancer-causing, brain-damaging chemicals into the local water, air and ground from 1924 to 2002. The townspeople are distraught, yet grateful that they now have an explanation of why so many New Yorkers elected Hillary Clinton to the Senate.
Violence over a disputed election in Kenya has reduced the normally staid African nation to a Stone Age civilization. More than 300 have been killed in riots, including 35 people who were burned to death in a church and two policemen who were killed with bows and arrows.
Cyprus and Malta became the 14th and 15th nations to adopt the euro. The U.S. dollar can now officially get the crap kicked out of it by Third World countries.
