Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

Nervous fliers, after aviation researchers declared the airline industry safer now than ever before, with the risk of passengers dying within the U.S. dropping to 1 in 45 million flights. 

The pythons, after a month-long effort to rid the Florida Everglades of Burmese pythons by 1,500 gun- and machete-wielding hunters ended with the capture of just 50 of the estimated 100,000 well-camouflaged, wily snakes in the swamp. “I saw nothing but alligators and birds,” said one frustrated hunter. 

Divine commentary, after the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican was struck by lightning twice in the hours following Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement. 

Bad week for:

Really needing a drink, after Sen. Marco Rubio, in the midst of making the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address, leaned partway out of the TV frame to grab a bottle of water and take a swig. Twitter wags called it “#Watergate.”

The gullible, after hackers broadcast a warning through a Montana TV station’s emergency alert system that “the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living.” Four concerned viewers called the police to see if the zombie apocalypse was real. 

Red meat, after the most loyal customer of Las Vegas’s Heart Attack Grill—home of the “Quadruple Bypass Burger”—died from a heart attack at 52. Owner Jon Basso mourned the loss of daily burger eater John Alleman, but said it “isn’t going to stop us from what we’re doing. People have got to live their lives.”