Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

Tempting fate, after Australian billionaire Clive Palmer announced he would build a replica of the Titanic to ferry passengers across the Atlantic. Titanic II will be just like the original, except this time, there will be enough lifeboats for everyone.

Mr. Spock, after Star Trek fans voted en masse to have one of Pluto’s moons named Vulcan, after the pointy-eared character’s home planet. The name will now be forwarded to the International Astronomical Union for a final decision.

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Sweet talk, after an Australian physicist proposed marriage to his scientist girlfriend with a mock academic paper that included a graph showing happiness growing over time, and suggested an “indefinite continuation of the study.” His girlfriend said yes.

Bad week for:

John Kerry, the new secretary of state, who referred in a speech to the nation of “Kyrzakhstan,” which does not exist. Kerry meant Kyrgyzstan, but mixed it up with Kazakhstan.

Japanese claustrophobes, with the news that the latest trend in crowded, expensive Tokyo is tiny apartments the size of a horizontal closet. “Geki-sema” rooms have a ceiling height of four feet, yet cost the equivalent of $586 a month.

Crime, after an Indiana couple was charged with a felony for allegedly sneaking from one movie theater to the next at a multiplex. Police say that Delilha Harbin, 40, confessed, “I know we done wrong,” and said she and her husband “were at a funeral all day and just were not thinking correctly.”