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.