A lighthearted look at news of the day:

A semitrailer truck got stuck on a narrow road in Butterfield Canyon last week, reportedly because a GPS system told the driver to keep going. Enter this as Exhibit A in the case against self-driving cars.
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If you saw everyone else driving off a cliff, would you do so, too? You would if everyone’s smart cars got hacked.
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That groan you heard last week was all the comedy writers and pundits in the land reacting to the defeat of Anthony Weiner in the New York mayoral primary.
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Weiner was to comedy writing what hurricane season is to roofers.
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Rumor has it Dennis Rodman might be hired to coach the North Korean Olympic basketball team. The only catch is that Kim Jong-un has to be the starting center.
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Think about this for a minute. Rodman might coach a team in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. I can foresee a crisis in which people think the entire North Korean team has defected, when in fact they will just be out all night trying to find their coach.
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On the other hand, if you were a dictator trying to warn your people about the evils of freedom and capitalism, you could do worse than Dennis Rodman as your poster child.
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The world was grateful last week when the president found a solution that avoids the U.S. having to bomb Syria. OK, so it wasn’t OUR president who found the solution, but you can’t have everything.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed in the New York Times rebutting President Obama’s speech to the nation. Millions of Americans thought it was an improvement over the guys the Republicans usually get to do that.
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Putin lectured the U.S. on what it means to follow the rule of law. Apparently, that’s a rule that doesn’t include extraditing people like Ed Snowden.
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A golf course in Wisconsin got into trouble for offering 9 holes for $9.11 to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It seems we’ve discovered where the current line on taste lies — somewhere between Miley Cyrus’ tongue and cashing in on a national tragedy.

Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.

A team of U.S. teenagers won an international geography championship last week. That’s one group that shouldn’t need a GPS to get back to the hotel.
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Plagued by scandal, Anthony Weiner’s mayoral campaign in New York decided last week to jump-start a resurgence with an old-fashioned, tried-and-true public profanity-laced tirade against an intern by a campaign official. At least this is one candidate that can’t be accused of trying to pretend to be something other than he is.
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Being in New York, perhaps Weiner’s strategy was to pander to the profanity prone, stuck-in-traffic cab-driver vote.
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You know things look glum for Anthony Weiner when even Elliot Spitzer said he won’t vote for him.
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Ed Snowden proved last week that if you stand firm for the principles of freedom, you will get to move to Russia. But he has a short lease on the place where he will live. Just wait until he starts publishing Vladimir Putin’s secret emails.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin granted Ed Snowden a one-year asylum. Apparently, they were running out of vouchers for the airport food court.
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What is a home in Moscow worth? Apparently enough that President Obama has gone from saying he won’t let a “hacker” jeopardize relations with Russia to maybe calling off an upcoming summit meeting with Putin, which ultimately could affect the conflict in Syria. Who says one man can’t change the world?
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Meanwhile, Pfc. Bradley Manning was convicted of espionage and other charges last week. Just think what would happen if we could get these guys to publish the secrets of al Qaida and other avowed enemies of freedom.
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The director of the National Security Agency was heckled last week as he spoke to a convention of hackers and security professionals in Las Vegas. Hackers are like the rest of us — tired of government doing things that belong to the private sector.
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So, the government is hacking our phone calls and emails, guys like Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning are hacking the government and China keeps finding its way into U.S. computer systems to collect secrets, while the U.S. government does the same to them. See, our mothers were right. The world would be better if we’d just move away from the screen and go out to play for a while.

Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.

I would say something about Anthony Weiner, but it appears he has had enough exposure already.

Given all we now know about Weiner and his Internet … uh … habits, it appears the most shocking thing we’ve heard from him lately is that he still intends to run for mayor of New York.

My guess is voters there might still forgive him if he promises to let people drink more than 16 ounces of soda pop.

The Senate passed a bill this week that ought to keep government-backed student loans at low interest rates. If there is one thing with which Congress has experience, it’s knowing how to borrow money easily.

To be fair, Congress ought to pass a law letting today’s students pass their loans onto their children or grandchildren.

If North Korea should get belligerent again any time soon, the United States could do worse than threatening to drop copies of “The Lone Ranger” or “R.I.P.D.” on them. The world hasn’t seen bombs that big in a long time.

The Postal Service still exceeds Hollywood for losses this summer. Congress now is considering eliminating door-to-door delivery to save money. The next step would be to eliminate deliveries during snow, rain, heat or gloom of night.

The Postal Services wants to deliver mail to “cluster boxes” rather than to individual homes. For example, Texas could have a cluster box in Austin, Kansas could have one in Topeka, etc.

Think of the feelings of anticipation you would get as you drive hundreds of miles to pick up your junk mail.

Maybe we’re going about this push for democracy around the world all wrong. We ought to be pushing for monarchies. Then when royal babies are born, people will be too excited to do anything bad to each other.

My favorite breaking news alert of the week: Kate Middleton still not yet skinny again.