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This week has been so full of WTF?!s that I'm having a really hard time choosing the best.

1. Lehman Brothers

Generally, the WTF of the week should make you say "man, I'm glad I'm not responsible for that!", but in the alternate reality of gambling high finance, this is not how things work. Don't take my word for it, have a look at the Lehman-Barclays deal where you'll find gems like "Barclays appeared to recognize that Lehman Brothers was only as good as the employees who make up the firm" (note from me: which is now bankrupt). Of course, these employees "should expect to receive the same amount of bonus money for 2008 that Lehman had set aside for them before it collapsed". Well, that's only fair considering that their CEO "took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007".

Should you feel the need to read some angry comments, have a look at this article in the Sunday Times. I've got some more WTFs to cover.

2. Bill O'Reilly's website

It's been hacked on Saturday, exposing the names and passwords of more than 200 paying subscribers. I hope whoever's responsible for storing the passwords in plain text gets a big fat bonus check at the end of the year.

3. Antec's full-page ad in Germany's leading IT magazine c't (Nr. 20, p. 151)

It contains exactly one sentence in German while the main paragraph is in French. Now certainly this ad's costs don't come close to the figures we've been hearing this week in connection with the financial meltdown (you could possibly compare it to Mr. Fuld's hourly earnings), but still, whoever did this should at least get a promotion ("successfully repositioned our brand from 'generic computer stuff' to 'French luxury computer accessories'").

Close contenders:

The LHC, for breaking instead of destroying the planet (which means I have to work tomorrow) and a 6 meter long python for being somewhere it doesn't belong (a field in Taiwan).