Good week for:
Playing God, after the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to British biologist Robert Edwards, for developing in vitro fertilization. His work was once condemned as “Frankenscience,” but it has enabled infertile couples to give birth to 4 million children.
Sending in the clowns, after voters in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest state, elected to Congress an illiterate clown who ran on the platform, “It can’t get any worse.”
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Latest Videos FromThe Week
Wearing SPF 100, after poolside guests at MGM Resorts in Las Vegas complained that the glass-walled, concave building concentrates solar rays so intensely that their hair begins smoldering and plastic cups melt. Locals call the reflection the “death ray”—though MGM prefers the term “solar convergence phenomenon.”
Bad week for:
Kelsey Martinovich, who was announced as the winner of Australia’s Next Top Model on live television. As Martinovich launched into her victory speech, host Sarah Murdoch said she’d made a mistake, and the winner was actually the other finalist.
The written word, after Jersey Shore star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi signed a book deal to “write” a novel, A Shore Thing. Snooki has admitted to reading only two books in her life.
Going undercover, after a Cathedral City, Calif., police officer responded to a late-night noise complaint, found three women drinking in a backyard pool, and allegedly unbuckled his gun belt, got naked, and jumped into the water. He has been placed on administrative leave.
