VBVW reports on the Very Best and Very Worst of everything. Every week. VBVW Books are on the way.

News: Helloween

VBVW for October 31, 2008: Helloween

• The Very Best

Seventeen hundred runners (yes, 1,700) were safe and accounted for after they had gone missing when a flood interrupted the Original Mountain Marathon in Cumbria, England. Most had taken refuge in an abandoned mine. The grueling marathon is held in October, according to organizers, “to allow weather to enhance the challenge.”

Led Zeppelin has announced plan to record and tour, though vocalist Robert Plant says he won’t join them. The band looks forward to performing on key for the first time since “Moby Dick.”

Bye, Vista. Microsoft bid adieu to its long-lampooned operating system and resurrected Windows. If you’re a PC — and not a Mac — you are really happy about this.

• The Very Worst

As if Alaskan politicians hadn’t drawn enough criticism this season, Republican Senator Ted Stevens has been found guilty on seven felony counts of violating federal ethics laws. The GOP, which can hardly afford a problem this close to the election, has plotted to shoot Stevens from a helicopter.

On the other side of the fence, Democratic Senator Dianne Wilkerson of Massachusetts has been charged with taking $23,500 in bribes after FBI agents captured her on film stuffing her bra with cash in a literal under-the-table deal. Apparently she didn’t want to be outdone by a Republican boob.

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Tzipi Livni called for early elections following her failed attempt at forming a coalition government. How on Earth do the Israelis ever expect to get along with the Arabs if they can’t get along with themselves?

News: Lost And Floundering

VBVW for October 24, 2008: Lost And Floundering

• The Very Best

Iran announced that it will stop executing children convicted of crimes. Children are identified as those under 18 years of age, and six have been executed in 2008 alone. At this rate, Iran should pull itself out of the Middle Ages sometime in the next 400 years.

Abducted six-year oldCole Puffinburger was found safe, wandering a Las Vegas street. The kidnapping may have been a message to his grandfather, who police believe may have stolen millions of dollars from Mexican meth traffickers. Bad move, Gramps.

A new examination has revealed severaladditional amino acids in vials from the 1953 Miller–Urey experiment. The original test was an attempt to show how life could have developed on Earth from common elements. Interestingly, no accompanying instructions from God were found in the vials.

• The Very Worst

India launched a moon rocket. Start counting the days till we outsource NASA to Bangalore.

Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan admitted that he made a “mistake” in expecting that Wall Street would behave itself without regulation. Not many people make a “mistake” worth trillions of dollars, Alan. Perhaps “phenomenally colossal and unimaginably stupid screwup” would have been a better choice of words.

A 43-year-old Japanese woman was jailed after she killed her “online husband” when he divorced her in a virtual game. It is not known if the two ever met in real life, but she has been arrested for hacking into the man’s account and killing his virtual self, who can no longer play the game. Of course, he’s not really dead but he was married to her online, although she isn’t married in the real world, so there has been no response from her husband, who exists only online, but . . . you know what? Even we can’t figure this one out.

News: Humping the Shark

VBVW for October 17, 2008: Humping The Shark

• The Very Best

Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark. DNA testing found that a pup carried by a female blacktip shark in a Virginia aquarium contained no genetic material from a male. Hey, maybe those one billion Catholics aren’t wrong after all . . .

Video-game magnate Richard Garriott lifted off from Kazakhstan with Expedition 18, headed for the International Space Station. Some think Garriott is looking for inspiration, others say he’s just a space invader.

A UCLA team found that searching the web stimulates parts of the brain that control complex reasoning in older adults. The researchers say this might help to counteract the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down, though there’s no keeping these people from forwarding outdated jokes.

• The Very Worst

Richard Cooey, convicted of raping, beating and killing two women two decades ago, was executed in Ohio by lethal injection. Cooey, who was 5-foot-7 and weighs 270 pounds, had argued he was too fat to die by lethal injection. And our justice system actually took the time to hear him out. What is wrong with us?

New home constructions, once thought to be the only truly sound investment out there, are the lowest they’ve been in nearly 18 years. Put another way, things haven’t been this bad since New Kids On The Block had a hit song.

Thanks to the media’s ability to turn any clown into a celebrity, we now know more about Joe the Plumber and Joe Six-Pack than we do about Joe Biden.

News: Collision Course

VBVW for October 10, 2008: Collision Course

• The Very Best

A meteoroid known as 2008 TC3 hit the Earth, gaining notoriety as the first such object to be discovered and identified prior to impact. This provides hope that science will be able to stop a really big asteroid before it turns us into a bad sci-fi flick like Armageddon or Deep Impact.

O.J. Simpson was found guilty of robbery and fraud, giving the American justice system a .500 batting average against the Juice, which qualifies it–finally-for the All Star Team.

German farmer Karl Merk has become the world’s first man to have both arms successfully transplanted, having lost his own pair six years ago in a corn shredder. Medical science has now proven that we can, in fact, “give him a hand.”

• The Very Worst

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List,” an inventory of biodiversity, reported that half the world’s 5,487 known mammals are declining in population, and a quarter are at risk of disappearing forever. We’ll miss all the humans, gorillas, dogs, and ponies; squirrels, manatees, and politicians, not so much.

In other unnerving nature news, a study commissioned by the EU has determined that the impact of deforestation costs the global economy between $2 and $5 trillion ever year. That means we lose more capital every year by killing trees than we will in the current banking crisis.

After spending half a million dollars on a resort getaway, AIG execs asked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for $38 billion dollars more, and he gave it to them.

News: Ministering To The Sick . . . And Twisted

VBVW for October 3, 2008: Ministering To The Sick . . . And Twisted

• The Very Best

Six-year old Shreeya Bajracharya, has been selected as Nepal’s new Kumari or “living goddess.” Given that Nepal’s adults are acting like children (the interior minister recently locked a local official in a bathroom), maybe they should give the kid some real legal power.

SpaceX successfully launched the first privately-developed liquid-fueled space launch vehicle into orbit. NASA officials may not have noticed since they spend most of their days just trying to figure out how to keep pieces of foam glued onto the Space Shuttle.

The U.S. vice presidential candidates debated. The best part? They’re not the presidential candidates.

• The Very Worst

Paul Newman died. What he has here is a failure to . . . well, you get the idea.

The short-sale ban enacted by the SEC failed to prevent stock-price declines as planned. So, can anybody tell us who exactly in the SEC has the slightest clue about what’s going on in this crisis?

The government of Brazil was cited as the worst illegal logger of the Amazon rainforest–by its own Environment Ministry. This gives new meaning to the phrase “you shouldn’t shit where you eat.”