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.”