Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

Narcissism, after the Oxford University Press declared that “selfie”—taking a self-portrait with a smartphone—was the new word of the year for 2013.

Taking your car, after an Amtrak train supposedly bound for New York City left Philadelphia, took a wrong turn onto the wrong track, and wound up in Philly’s suburbs.

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Admitting you were wrong, eventually, after the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News apologized for an 1863 editorial that dismissed President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as “silly remarks.” The paper said its previous editors must have been “under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink.”

Bad week for:

The need to know, after British researchers admitted that they had killed the world’s oldest living animal, a 507-year-old Icelandic clam, when they opened its shell to determine its age.

Re-enactments, after police in upstate New York confiscated a replica Civil War cannon from a man who’d allegedly fired it for eight consecutive days at his neighbors’ homes over a neighborhood dispute. “I don’t recall, during my 34-year career, taking a cannon,” said Sheriff Joseph Gerace.

Field trips, after school outings to Toronto’s City Hall were suspended amid concerns that Mayor Rob Ford had made the building “unsafe” for kids. “The erratic behavior, the vulgar language—it’s just not deemed an appropriate environment to bring children into,” said Councilor Karen Stintz.