Good Week, Bad Week

Listen in as John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee, co-hosts of "The Takeaway," bring you an audio version of The Week's "Good Week, Bad Week.” You can call in with Good Week, Bad Week nominations of your own at 877-8-MY TAKE, or e-mail them to mytake@thetakeaway.org. See more from "The Takeaway."

Good week for:

Director James Cameron, whose Avatar broke the world box office record he’d set with a previous film, Titanic. The 3-D science-fiction film has brought in $1.86 billion in just 39 days.

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History repeating itself, after a ring belonging to Alexander the Great was stolen from an exhibition in Israel called “Antiqui­ties Theft in Israel,” a collection of previously stolen artifacts.

White men who can’t jump, after a former wrestling promoter announced plans to start an all-white basketball league. Don “Moose” Lewis denied any racist feelings, but said it was a fact that blacks dominate the NBA. “Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like,” he said.

Bad week for:

Reading books, after Laredo, Texas, lost its only bookstore, a B. Dalton located in a mall. Now, the closest bookstore to the city’s 250,000 inhabitants is 150 miles away, in San Antonio.

Art appreciation, after a student attending a class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City lost her balance and fell into The Actor, a large painting by Pablo Picasso. She grabbed the canvas and tore the lower right-hand corner, thereby reducing its value from $130 million to $65 million.

Equal-opportunity employment, after a British government-run jobs center rejected an ad from a company specifying that applicants “must be very reliable and hardworking.” A government official told the company that it could get sued “for discriminating against unreliable people.”