Consequences, and more

Good week for:

Consequences, with hospitals in the Houston area preparing for a 25 percent surge in births nine months after Hurricane Ike knocked out power for days. “You can only do so much when there’s no television, nothing open, and there’s nowhere to go,” said obstetrician Rakhi Dimino, who is eight months pregnant.

Nuance, after a six-year, $12 million scientific study identified the flavors in New Zealand’s signature Sauvignon Blanc as a combination of passion fruit, asparagus, and cat’s pee. “If you had a whole lot of cat’s pee it obviously wouldn’t be great,” said researcher Sue Blackmore. “It’s amazing what a little can do.”

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Cutting loose, after an Ohio teenager was suspended from his fundamentalist Baptist school for taking his public school girlfriend to her senior prom. “It was worth it,” said Tyler Frost, who violated a school contract against dancing and rock music. “I still feel I’m a Christian.”

Bad week for:

Cutting loose, after two-dozen seniors at a California high school prom thought it would be fun to squeeze into an elevator and found themselves trapped between floors, sweaty and claustrophobic, for more than an hour.

The seductive ways of the English, after police in rural New York ticketed a 17-year-old Amish boy for having beer in his horse-drawn buggy.

Joe the Plumber, who announced that he’s leaving the Republican Party because it supports excessive government spending. Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher said, however, that he opposes any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, and noted that he keeps his kids away from ‘‘queers.”